


Funeral of Flowers

by thecountessolivia



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: 1800s AU, Alternate Universe - Historical, Art, Carnival, Complete, Count Hannibal Lecter, Detective Will, Falling In Love, First Time, M/M, Murder, Venice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 04:29:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 36,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15477687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecountessolivia/pseuds/thecountessolivia
Summary: Venice, 1870. The heart of winter. The once great city republic is on its knees. The banned institution of Carnevale lives on discreetly in the masked balls that light up the grand palazzi of the rich and the well-born.Mr Will Graham, detective, travels to Venice from London to give a lecture on the Hobbs case. His desire to remain in the city only briefly is soon scuppered by matters both bloody and sentimental.Cover image byash-and-starlight[Repost]





	1. The Buttonhole and the Oarlock

**Author's Note:**

> Reposting after some MH troubles.

 

Not one inch of Will Graham had been spared from the soot and the rain. The issue of the countless steam engines that had carried him across the continent and the equally innumerable clouds which had greeted him on his arrival that morning into Venice mixed into a kind of grim tar that now saturated his winter coat, dripped from the brim of his hat and crept into his nostrils. Perhaps for the best: perhaps the substance held his physical frame together. Between the weary ache in his bones, the thin current of dread in his heart and the unwholesome heat which had stolen into his skull on his departure from London, Will thought he would otherwise shatter into a hundred pieces.

Shivering, dazed and lost, he retreated to a bench between the arches of the long vaulted colonnade which held up the Palazzo Ducale. He had been pacing outside the palace for the past half hour, thrusting the envelope labelled "Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti" under the noses of several passersby. All had either failed to understand him — for Will's grasp of Italian and Venetian languages was scant at best — or had directed him to the wrong doors.

And so he waited, clutching his briefcase and watching the scene before him through raindrop- spattered spectacles. An army of clouds marched across the late morning sky, trampling the sun into a faint yellow stain. Feeble light streamed down onto the bustling lagoon and onto the flooded paving slabs of the Piazza San Marco, with its motley load of humanity. Every merchant and gawker, every tart and beggar who traipsed about the square carried beneath their step, in the rain- slicked stones, an upside down reflection of their being.

The dread current in his heart told Will not to look down at the pavement to seek out his own reflection. He wouldn't find it. He'd find instead the dead man who'd followed him here from London.

Two weeks ago Will might have hoped that this most reluctant of journeys would at least prove to be a successful flight from his nightmares. That hope had long since departed.

"Mr Graham?"

Will startled and looked about to find the source of the surprised voice. It had come from the jovial, moustachioed face of a stout, middle-aged man.

"Yes. You are—"

"Filippo Coggiola, Comandante Generale of the Polizia here in Venice. I recognise you from the papers. Welcome, welcome to our fair city!" Will's hand was wrung out between Coggiola's own with such vigour that Will wondered if the man expected him to bleed gold.

"But by all the saints," the police chief exclaimed, reaching up to shake the raindrops from the lapels of Will's coat, "why are you here? Why has my man not taken you directly inside?"

"Hello, commander. Your man met me at the train station and took me to the hotel. He then departed and so I found my own way, at least this far."

"That fool! What shameful behaviour. Forgive me. And allow me to escort you to the lecture hall. I should imagine our audience is already assembled."

Will followed Coggiola inside, through courtyards and covered walkways of the palazzo, then past a vast set of doors and up a wide marble staircase. The police chief was loud, affable and inquisitive, traits to which Will Graham was nearly allergic.

"Your journey, it was pleasant? Was Turin your last stop? Or Milan?"

"It was Turin," Will replied. As for his journey, Will had no cause to share with his host the horrors that had plagued it; or to inform him that the entire lecture tour had been imposed on him by Crawford. A sense of duty to his superiors and cowardice of his own inner world had carried him this far — nothing more.

"You must know that we are honoured to be the first on the continent to hear of your case. But what a tragedy that we won't keep you for longer. Three days, is that truly all?"

"That is so. I am due in Florence next Tuesday."

"Well, then, it must be so. I hope you will at least take in the sights and enjoy some fine Venetian hospitality before you depart. And your hotel? In Cannaregio? It's a charming sestiere, though why we couldn't find you quarters in San Marco is a mystery."

"The hotel is fine, thank you. Though I would not have objected to a stay on one of the less populated islands nearby."

Coggiola expelled a short, shouty laugh. "Ha! Very good, Mr Graham. Though I must tell you: you would have found yourself on those islands largely in the company of anglers and stray dogs." Will was just about to reply that to this, too, he would not have objected when the commander brought them to a stop. "But look, we have arrived."

They stood in a gilded library, muses and gods dancing on the ceiling above them. Wide open doors of carved oak lead into the next room. Beside them, a stand board displayed a poster which bore the insignia of the Istituto, Will's name in extravagantly large letters, and a crude reproduction of one of the photographs which had been taken of him for the English press. The smaller text underneath was peppered with exclamation marks and words spelled in capital letters.

Inside the next room, neat rows of chairs lined with moss green velvet parted in the middle and lead to a lectern. Not a single seat had been left unoccupied and a low, excited murmur filled the air. Will looked over the backs of his audience: a hundred animated heads, silver and brown and ginger; black jackets cut through with the bright coloured dresses of the three or four ladies in attendance; and the incongruous dark red suit of one man.

Coggiola cleared his throat as they stepped inside. Every face turned at once, fixing on Will as if he had just let out a scream which, in the tarred, heated recesses of his mind, he had.

\----

Will removed his glasses and shuffled his notes into a neat stack on the lectern. Sweat had been trickling steadily down his spine for the last half hour of his talk. The faces before him had begun to dissolve into a fleshy sea, filled with pairs of eyes that skewered him through. Every few minutes Hobbs' face bubbled up to the surface, sickly pale and grinning.

"And thus we brought the case to its conclusion. Thank you." Will's voice had grown hoarse. He wished very much he could sit down.

"How thrilling!" came a whisper from the audience. Applause, uncertain at first then thunderous, rose to fill the room. Will nearly flinched at the sharp assault of sound and the inappropriate reaction.

Coggiola stood from his seat upon receiving a desperate look from Will. With a broad, calming gesture of his hands, he begged the audience to be still. “Thank you, thank you all. Signor Graham will undoubtedly be happy to take a few questions now.”

A dancing forest of hands shot up. From it, unsolicited, rose a red-cheeked woman who spoke hurriedly in a high and quivering voice.

“Dear signore, I had hoped that for your noble actions you would accept this gift from the people of Venezia.” The woman reached into her sizeable handbag and retrieved a small, framed picture which she thrust in Will's direction. Will squinted at it. "Forgive me, signora, what— what does your painting depict?"

The woman sniffed proudly, clearly trying to contain stronger emotions. "It is an image of you as San Michele, slaying that dreadful dragon, that beast called Hobbs. Bless you, signore!" The excited artist was being drawn back into her chair by her embarrassed companion. "Bless you for destroying the monster and protecting that girl. You are a saint!"

The gathered crowd reacted with a weak smattering of applause, cut through with a few groans and nervous giggles. Will was about to object to the woman's characterisation when a voice rose up from the back row, sour and harsh like spoiled lemonade.

“Saint, ha!”

Coggiola was reassuring the artist that her offering would be collected from her in due course and delivered to Mr Graham. Before he'd finished speaking, another man stood up.

"Mr Graham, the investigative methods you describe must be said to touch on the psychic.” The man was advancing his point by means of waving a pen about. “Have you ever considered that you may be a medium?"

"A medium!" a red-haired man two seats down from the pen-wielder exclaimed before Will had caught a breath to form his reply, "Signor Pizzi, really, would you reduce this man to a charlatan? Clearly it was his superior intellect and analytical insight which allowed him to catch this abominable killer."

The two neighbours lapsed into Venetian to continue their spat. Others joined in, siding with one or the other, while the police chief tried to broker peace. Will's eyes swept desperately about the room. His head was pulsing with pain. The mouths of the audience clattered like those of dummies or automatons. All seemed engaged in one debate or another, but for the man in the dark red suit, who was still toiling over to his sketchbook, as he had throughout Will's lecture.

"Comandante Coggiola!" The sour voice came from the back once more. "Comandante, who would be so understanding of this Hobbs as to sympathise with him? This man before us could not have seen into the corrupted soul of a murderer had he not at least entertained the same shameful desires."

Will gripped the lectern tightly. Gasps emerged from a few throats. "Signor Scarpa, you are unjust," said the same red-haired man who prevented Will from being labelled a psychic. Coggiola, thusfar accommodating of the unruly audience, stared at the back of the room furiously, arms crossed over his barrel chest.

The man called Scarpa was on his feet. His face was as sour as his voice. He was pointing at Will. "Ask yourselves: is this man not a sinner?"

The audience protested and urged the man to sit back down. Will stared down at his notes. The ink bled from the pages and turned red, threatening to run between his fingers like Abigail's blood. The grand room had grown impossibly small and stifling. Will hadn't uttered a word to justify himself. It seemed hopeless, beyond the understanding of those assembled. He wanted nothing more than to flee.

By now the gathered intelligentsia had been quieted and appeased with appeals from the police chief. Will glimpsed an end to his torment.

"Thank you, gentlemen, ladies. And thank you to our honourable speaker. Our next lecture is in April and, as you all know, it is from Dr Cella on the new criminal science of anthropometry."

\----

While Will shook hands and declined dinner invitations, Coggiola was apologising for the second time that morning.

"You must forgive the misguided enthusiasm of our group," he said. "They have their reasons for such behaviour, outside of your obvious celebrity. I hope to make these clear to you. You will dine with me this evening of course?"

Will agreed wearily and was just about to put on his coat and offer his good-byes when the commander waved at someone behind him.

"Count Lecter! I hadn't forgotten my promise to make an introduction. Please, join us."

Will peered back over his shoulder. The man in the dark red suit had extracted himself from a small circle which included the sour-voiced, sour-faced Scarpa. Now he approached Will with the calculated grace of someone stepping over teacups or bodies. Will had read somewhere that Venetians wore red to mourn their dead. He wondered for whom, or for what, the man was grieving. His face was as solemn as a state funeral.

“Count Hannibal Lecter, Mr Will Graham," Coggiola said. "Like you, Mr Graham, the count was once a stranger to our fair city. But he is now one of its finest ornaments."

"It is always a pleasure to meet a fellow stranger," the man said. "Thank you for your talk. It was very educational." His accent was much fainter than the commander's, though not Latin in origin.

Will took the extended hand, warm and dry in his own sweaty palm. Having endured enough stares for one day, he avoided the count's face. The thread of his courtesy, thin at the best of times, was becoming perilously frayed, burning through with fever and unease. "And what makes the count so ornamental, commander?"

Coggiola let out an uneasy chuckle and answered quickly. "Despite his noble birth, the count's hands are never idle. Over the years his work with the surgeons at the ospedale civile has been remarkable. Truly groundbreaking."

"It is true I have been granted a few patents," Count Lecter admitted dryly.

"And saved quite a few lives in the process, no doubt. Count Lecter has also spoken about his surgical innovations here, at our lecture series, and has consulted with my men on the force."

Will acknowledged all of this with a bland nod. Ornamental or not, the count called Lecter represented a delay to his goal of leaving the lecture hall as quickly as possible. Still he couldn't help but take in the details which completed the man's venous red suit: the oddly patterned cravat; the black coat draped over his arm; and above all the buttonhole, which had been pierced through with a beautiful red camellia. In his current state, Will expected the flower to start bleeding. It did not.

"I assume you are spoken for this evening, Mr Graham?" the count asked. "I am, by Comandante Coggiola."

"Then will you at least permit me to offer you transport back to your hotel? For a weary traveller my private gondola will be far more comfortable than the public ones."

Will was beyond caring. Whatever got him back to his hotel, and fast. Still he looked to Coggiola, out of some remnants of decorum. "If the commander doesn't object."

"Of course I do not. I will leave you in the count's capable hands." Will's hand was being shaken for gold again. "Mr Graham, I thank you and apologise once more for a less than agreeable welcome. I shall see you this evening. At seven. And this time I will collect you personally, without fault."

They said their good-byes and Will stepped out of the lecture hall and into the library in the silent company of his new chaperone. The crowd had been mercifully whittled down to a few stragglers. The count paused to slip on his hat and coat and Will's eyes drifted again to the crimson blossom on his lapel. It stood out, fresh and unblemished and pure. Will thought of Abigail. His head ached more than ever.

"Will it not be crushed by your coat?" Will heard himself blurt out.

Count Lecter looked to Will, then down at his flower. His lips arranged themselves into something that bordered on a smile.

"Here.” He extracted the camellia from his jacket and extended it to Will. "Will you protect it for me?"

Will met the man's eyes at last. Their gazes held while Will hesitated, then took the offering between careful and uncertain fingers. In his fevered mind, the red flower had become a torch, something to light his way out of his current state of mental peril.

\----

Not a word passed between them as they left the palace. Just as well: Will was obliged to give all his attention to the staircase, which seemed to smooth out into a slide beneath his step. He forced his feet down flat to meet the marble and gripped the handrail tight.

They emerged into the icy breeze of the piazza. The count's umbrella snapped open over Will's heated head and he set off, navigating briskly through the cacophonous crowds and seeing off with a coin a beggar or two.

When they passed the worst of it, Will saw it fit to speak at last.

"Will you not dissect me with questions as well, Count Lecter? You might as well, whilst I'm on the slab."

"Mr Graham, your rude audience aside, I should imagine you have spent the past several days in the enforced company of nosey fellow passengers, chatty train porters and overly gregarious hotel clerks." Lecter steered Will away from a larger puddle as he spoke. "You must have been buried under a veritable avalanche of strangers. My gift of welcome to you, if you will have it, is my silence."

Will kept a sidelong stare on the man's sharp profile almost until they reached the dock. It wasn't until the count gestured to the cabin of a sleek black gondola, staffed by a stone-faced, oar-wielding youth, that Will managed his response.

“Thank you for this.” He stepped into the boat, gesturing awkwardly about it with the flower he still held in his hand. "A—and for the silence as well."

The count nodded once and settled down beside him in the cabin. “You are welcome. You may return the favour by relaxing now, and taking in the sights. They are remarkable.“

He signed to the gondolier and they set off at once. His gift had been sincere. He sat beside Will as stone-faced and silent as the young man who propelled them. The noise of the piazza subsided until all that remained was the peaceful swish and splash of the oar through the jade coloured water and the patter of rain on the sleek surfaces of the boat. Will felt as if he'd left Hobbs behind on the shore. After days of having his bones rattled by hundreds of miles of rail, the smooth glide of the gondola seemed to turn his insides to liquid. Perhaps all of him would soon dissolve and join the water below.

He felt a bit cold. A bit nauseous. He turned to peer through the window in the back of the cabin. The vistas of Venice unfolded before him: serene domes and spires, lace-like facades of the waterfront palazzi. Will blinked slowly at the ethereal vision. The ancient structures seemed to sink then rise from the water, in time to his breath.

Rhythmic like a hypnotist's pendulum, the gondolier's oar cut through the scene. Will's gaze drifted to the golden oarlock which held it. It was shaped like a hippocamp, though the mythical creature bore not the head of a horse, but of a stag.

"Mr Graham?" Will heard the count's voice as if through a dream. Was there a hand on his shoulder? Something wasn't quite right, but what? The hippocamp's golden tail uncoiled from the lock, grew long and whipped through the air. Will reached for it with his flower and smiled.

The golden monster’s tail slashed the water, which surged quickly in reply. It rose and rose until it swallowed Will's senses whole. The world faded to black.


	2. La Serenissima

_"Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,_  
_Luxe, calme et volupté."_  
  
\- L'invitation au voyage, Baudelaire

 

Will waded into the Thames and found her waters warm. Summer insects buzzed about his head, but he could not see them. He didn't have his rod — why had he not taken it? Had he left it at home? He walked until the water reached his waist and then Will waited, palms skimming the calm, smooth surface. Something was coming, cleaving the riverbed in its wake.

The unseen insects drifted past his head. Will heard human voices form inside the buzzing swarm. He looked back. Jack Crawford, Dr Bloom and members of his audience at the Palazzo Ducale stood solemnly on the shore. All held flowers, huge kaleidoscopic armfuls of them. They tore off the blooms one by one and cast them into the water.

The stag-headed hippocamp rose from the water. Its tail coiled about Will's legs and pulled him under in one smooth glide. Will went down so easily, accepting and without fear. Submerged, he wrapped his arms around the creature and saw the red living muscle of its heart beating through the translucent blue and gold scales of its skin. Will held on tight and together they swam, into the river's depths.

They drifted and drifted, into a cool nothing then towards a sea of golden light. The hard outlines of reality came into focus. The tail unspooled from about Will. The creature dissolved back into water, leaving Will filled with an unnamed longing. He gasped like a landed fish and opened his eyes.

He blinked slowly. A strange room. A strange time. The sensation of drifting hadn't quite subsided and the bed which held him up seemed to bob like a moored vessel. The soft white sheets lay over him like an all-body compress. Will stared up at a ceiling where a chandelier's countless arms twisted like two black octopuses caught in battle. He waited for the tentacles to come alive, to come down and snatch him up. They didn't.

Perhaps he was still dreaming? For a few moments he allowed that thought to hold back the approach of unpleasant facts: that he had swooned in the gondola on his way back to the hotel and had been taken to the home of — what had been his name? The "fellow stranger". The man in red. The silent count. Will let out a soft groan and buried his face in a mound of pillows.

At least something had been gained from all this: the chaos of his arrival into Venice and the heated dread of the lecture hall both seemed a lifetime away. Will's head felt cooler, calmer — almost collected. He peeled back the sheets and found he'd been divested of his coat, jacket, tie and shoes. He sat up slowly, finding his limbs stiff and uncooperative. He peered about the room and spotted his clothes and briefcase near a hearth where low flames crackled softly.

How long had he been sleeping? A strange light was streaming in through the veiled triptych of windows behind him and through the balcony doors to his left, sharpening the red brocade of the wallpaper. Will felt the sudden and overwhelming urge to rise and orient himself in space and time.

He hoisted himself from the bed and walked unsteadily across the room, towards the balcony. He wrestled for a moment with the yellow silk curtains, then pulled the doors open and stepped outside. The cold marble stung his feet and the sharp icy breeze cut into him at once. In the moment, Will could disregard both with ease. He stared through the shadowed columns of the balcony and breathed out a lungful of something like awe.

A blazing sunset had slicked itself over the Grand Canal and turned it to blood. Across the water, the fading light had gilded the facades and reflections of the churches and the palazzi. The sound of evening bells drifted through the winter air, woven with the distant melancholy melodies of passing gondoliers. The vessels and their captains, silhouetted black against crimson, sailed beneath Will's windows, disappearing under an iron bridge that arched over the canal like the spinal column of a martyred saint or dancer. The entire world floated, luxuriously calm.

Will stepped forward and gripped the balustrade. He sought for words that would give adequate shape to the tight feeling in his chest.

"It's so—"  
  
"Serene?"

The voice came from behind but didn't startle him. Will turned and saw the man, the stranger. He was crossing the room with that same cautious grace Will had glimpsed at the lecture.

"Forgive the intrusion, I thought perhaps you were still resting," he said.

The freezing air shocked Will at last and he felt absurdly self-conscious. "Count—" he looked down at his bare feet and flexed his cold-numbed toes. The name came to him just in time. "Count Lecter. Will you please spare me further torment of uncertainty and tell me what happened?"

The count paused by the fire to collect Will's coat. “I've met many men new to Venice," he  
said, stepping closer and onto the balcony, "but never one who swooned upon seeing her beauty." His features barely shifted in the crepuscular light, but Will perceived in them an impression of mirth. He felt a warm feeling creep through him and flush his cheeks, despite the cold. The feeling grew when his coat was draped over his shoulders, the same floating uncertainty as when he'd been handed the flower. What had become of it?

"It wasn't— I hadn't—" He looked up at his host. The red and golden light over the canal smoothed over the striking planes of his face and pooled in his eyes, which had fixed on Will to the exclusion of all else.

"Of course not," the count said. "You were overtired from your journey, during the course of which you caught a fever. The rude reception at the lecture yesterday—"

"Yesterday!" Will exclaimed. He'd slept here a day, longer. He rushed back into the room, towards his belongings. "This is absurd. I must go."

"Mr Graham." The count followed Will inside, but did not bar his way. "I would beg you to reconsider. I am your host and, as matters stand, your physician. You are not yet well. Besides, you have not eaten."

As if on cue, Will became aware of his ravenous hunger. He clutched at his briefcase as if it might hide the sudden roar arising from his stomach. He sighed, capitulated.

"I was to have dinner with Coggiola," he said.

"Naturally I informed him of your indisposition and he committed you to my care."

A skittish feeling was sweeping over Will, a need to flee from a sense of imposition.

"Still, I should go. Thank you—" Will was never sure when his poverty of manners lapsed into outright boorishness. For once, he actually cared. "Thank you for coming to my aid."

The count stepped closer and rested his hand over Will's. Finger by finger, with a surgeon's care, he pried the briefcase away and set it down.

"There is a filled bath in the adjoining room. It should still be warm and is at your disposal. Afterwards, please come downstairs and join me for dinner."

He moved for the door and Will watched his back as he retreated. His suit today was black, beautifully cut.

"Count Lecter," Will said after him.

The count turned and waited, hands clasped before him.

Will nodded back towards the balcony. "It is serene. It is exactly that."

The count watched him for a moment, then inclined his head. "La Serenissima, as some still call it."

He departed.  
  
Will found he was shivering. He stripped himself quickly and headed for the bath.


	3. Letters, Notes & Telegrams

Count Lecter's dining room was staged with the same stark opulence as all the other interiors Will had passed on his way from the bedroom. What it lacked, like the rest of the grand palazzo, was any sign of servants — or, for that matter, any image of persons now or once living. The presence of any occupant at all betrayed itself only through the crackle of logs in the cavernous fireplace and the wine already poured into glasses beside the two place settings on the table. Will felt himself in the company of silence.

He slung his coat over one of the dining chair and set down his briefcase. He felt loose-limbed and peculiarly lucid after his warm bath and the first full night — and day — of untroubled sleep in weeks. He tried to recall if this is what it meant to be at ease, and he wondered why he should feel like this in a place so alien and so above his status. A certain giddiness accompanied his humour, brought on no doubt by the knowledge of its fleeting nature.

He undertook a small tour of the dining room. He touched the twisting horns of an unknown animal which decorated the mantlepiece and quickly looked away from the small erotic canvas above them. Against the opposite wall stood a long terracotta planter. Will ran his fingers through the hardy herbs that grew within it and examined the five or six paintings which hung in a loose formation above, against a backdrop of midnight blue brocade.

Held in gilded frames, all the scenes showed Venice: exquisitely detailed renditions of her canals and churches, done in the precise hand of old masters. All but one, the smallest of them, which caught Will's attention: a twilight scene of the lagoon, smeared onto the canvas in blacks and blues, like the view of the city through the eyes of someone just awake.

Will rummaged through his pockets to find his spectacles and slipped them on. He leaned closer to examine the canvas when he heard footsteps.

"Good evening again," the count said.  
  
Will turned. "Where are your servants, Count Lecter?"  
  
Eyes dragged over Will, then over the coat he had tossed over the dining room chair.

"I am, some would say, a modern man when it comes to hired help. They have separate quarters away from here and come only when they are needed."

He moved closer and Will stared at his red cravat, cut into the black of his suit like a neat gaping chest wound.

"Your hotel forwarded your correspondence," the count said. "I thought you might like to read it before dinner." Will looked down at the offered letter and recognised the hand at once: its care- free quality, the pale blue ink. He tried but failed to repress a smile. "Now if you'll excuse me once more. Our meal is nearly ready."

"The commander was right," Will said after him, "about your hands never being idle."

Will's host cast a small, conspiratorial smile over his shoulder. "I'm merely denying the Devil his playthings."

Will couldn't help a smile in return — it had lingered anyway since he received his letter. He watched Count Lecter leave the room. Then he settled hurriedly at the table, took a sip of his wine and tore into the envelope.

> _Dear Mr Graham,_
> 
> _Your postcard from Paris reached me yesterday. I was ever so happy to receive it. I wonder if I shall one day see that beautiful city?_
> 
> _My stay with Dr Bloom has been most agreeable and I am told my recovery is progressing well._
> 
> _I am not bored at all. I have been given books. And even in winter the views of the gardens are splendid._
> 
> _Of the dogs you left in Dr Bloom's care the smallest one was allowed inside yesterday and amused me greatly._
> 
> _I wish you much success on your lecture tour and I hope you will call on us as soon as you return._
> 
> _I would write more but I am being called to supper._  
>    
>  _You have regards from Dr Bloom and everyone else here. Yours sincerely,_  
>    
>  _Abigail Hobbs_

  
\----

The food set before Will appeared as an extension of the room's decor: another work of art, deliberate and intimidating. Despite his ravenous hunger, Will had to pause to admire its arrangements and textures. Tentacles of a purple-hued vegetable coiled about the plate.

"Count, you will have to explain. I'm not— this is beautiful but, to me, beyond unfamiliar."

Count Lecter looked pleased at Will's bewilderment. "Fegato alla veneziana. Liver, paired with fried polenta, onion confit and braised Radicchio di Treviso. An ancient dish, which I hope has been elevated tonight above its base origins."

Will bit into a mouthful and restrained himself from making a noise of pleasure. The meat melted on his tongue.

"The baseness has been transcended and then some. Compliments to your chef, count."

The count's features softened again, as they had earlier on the balcony. He inclined his head in thanks. "If I may ask, Mr Graham: how is the young Miss Hobbs?"

Will peered up from his food. His frown at the transgression must have shown.

"Forgive me," Will's host added at once. "I did not read the name on your letter, I merely made an assumption. The smile which visited your face earlier could only have been caused by an epistle from a lovely young girl."

Will was still frowning. He took another hefty bite and chased it with a swig of his wine. "She's well. She's... safe. Above all else, she is safe."

"Safe also, I hope, from the awful things written about her in the papers?"

"Of course she is. She needn't know any of it," Will said. How much had the count read about the Hobbs case? What had been printed in the papers here in Venice? He soon had his answer.

"The tabloids here speculated about an engagement in a year or two. The brave hero marrying the maiden he rescued. What a headline that would make."

The count's words dropped into the well of Will's heart and kept on falling. He'd never even come close to considering the idea. Couldn't consider it, ever. His reasons swam in the tar at the bottom of the well, old and painful and never given voice. He resumed his meal without a reply.

"It's gossip, of course," the count continued, "but better men were surprised that you didn't consider Miss Hobbs for you ward."

"It would hardly be appropriate. I shot her father."

"Is that the only reason?"

Will stayed hunched over his food and ate, chewing slowly to drag out his answers.

"One reason that’s good enough,” he said. He could name half a dozen more. The longing he felt in the dream rose up again in his chest.

Candlelight glinted off Count Lecter's knife as he divided his meal for conquest. "Papers publish whatever will engage the fears and desires of their readership. You, Mr Graham, embody a number of human fears and desires."

Will thought of his audience at the lecture, the sense of dread in the room. He was certain the Hobbs case wasn't entirely to blame for it. "That goes some way towards explaining the scenes at the Istituto," he muttered and took up another mouthful.

The count agreed with a small nod. "Your audience saw in you an angel-like saviour, or a mystic who sees through the veil of death. Or as the embodiment of sin. Man loves to turn his fellow man into symbols. Into ideas. It is a cruelty."

"Cruelty is usually driven by fear."

"Usually. Sometimes it is driven by envy. You acted and slew the beast, whereas they never could."

"Do you see me as a symbol, Count Lecter?" Will asked and heard the faint pleading note in his question.

"I do not."  
  
"How do you see me?"

The count leaned back in his chair and set his cutlery down. He regarded Will for a moment. "As an equal," he answered.

That shocked Will, and he didn't know how to guard against the shock. It was not even remotely the answer he had imagined and he didn't understand it. He stared down into his plate. "If that is the case then you should ask me how I see you."

Will's host made a small gesture of invitation. "With your considerable talents you have no doubt already formed some view of me."

That wouldn't be so easy to put into words. But Will could make an attempt. He stood and crossed the room, towards the wall hung with paintings of Venice. He pointed to the strange smudged scene.

"This one is your favourite."  
  
"Others could guess as much. It is centrally placed and hung at eye level."

"True," Will said. "But they could never guess why. It's not your favourite because it's the most beautiful or the most skilful in execution. It's because it is honest."

"Do I value honesty so highly?"

"You must. It's what you've been trying to extract from me so far tonight. Maybe from yourself." Will reached up and moved his fingertips close to the canvas. He could almost feel the cool waters of the lagoon. "It's spontaneous and raw. It attempts to marry beauty to truth. And it frustrates you."

Count Lecter rose and moved to stand beside Will. He didn't look at the painting. He looked at Will, and Will's feet began to turn liquid again. The paisley flames full of flowers danced on his cravat, while the light from the fire danced over the whetted bones of his face. Will had to look away, as he had on the balcony. He waited: for rebuttal or agreement or reproach.

"I bought the painting from a certain American dandy," the count said instead. "He'd been made bankrupt and was pleased to receive my patronage."

\---

They resumed their meal and their talk picked up again with ease. The count spoke of the history of the palazzo, of its former occupants. Will listened with greatest fascination to the details of the building's construction.

"How are such grand structures raised on what must be nothing more than a muddy marsh?"

"Each of the islands has been impaled a thousand times with whole beams of oak. Foundations are built atop these. Beneath this city lies a drowned inverted forest."

Will smiled at the image. He smiled, too, at the easy progression of their conversation, so free of the hazards and obstacles Will usually found in human interaction. The words flowed like the wine at the count's table, rich and drawn from some seemingly bottomless dark pool.

The low chime of a distant bell, somewhere within the house, halted the flow. "Someone at my door," the count said and rose. "If you'll excuse me once more." He returned some minutes with a folded note which he handed it to Will. 

> _Mr Graham,_
> 
> _I do not wish to strain your health further but it is urgent that I see you. If you have recovered enough under Count Lecter's excellent care, please come see me at the Osteria alla Staffa this evening. I will be there from nine o'clock. Otherwise the Ospedale Civile in the morning._

> _Respectfully yours,_  
>    
>  _Coggiola_

Will showed the count the message and stared off into the fire. The count read it, then let it drift into the flames.

\----

The gondola rung its arrival and they went out onto the waterfront steps of the palace to meet it. Will found he was looking for reasons to stall his departure. One came to him in the form of a recollection.

"Count Lecter, you were drawing at my lecture."  
  
"I was," the count replied and waited, watching Will closely.

Seconds ticked by. Will clutched too hard at the handle of his briefcase and cast his eyes to the view before them. The sky had long been drained of its crimson sunset and stripped of its ponderous clouds, giving way to a cold moon. That word came to Will again: serene. His heart beat faster, from the chill or the wine or the beauty of it all.

"What were you drawing?" he asked at last, if only to hear the answer he already knew.

"You, Mr Graham. I was drawing you."

Will's heart knocked against his bones like the desperately clenched fist of someone trapped. His next question struggled to form. Its answer came to the rescue.

"I'd like to show you the drawing," the count said and stepped closer, hand extended in farewell. "I'd like to know what you think of it. Will you dine with me again before you leave Venice?"

"Yes," Will said at once. He held the offered hand but did not shake it. "Yes, I will. And thank you— again."

Then he broke off and moved quickly for the gondola, nearly slipping on the steps.

"Mr Graham," the count called after him. Will paused and turned to see him, moonlit and still against the palace doors. "Thank you for paying me a visit."

It was only when he was already sailing into the young Venetian night that Will wondered at the profound strangeness of those last words.

After all, he hadn't paid a visit. He woke up from a dream in Hannibal Lecter's world.

\----

He found Coggiola alone in the back room of a bustling tavern, behind a dish stacked with emptied mussel shells and a bottle from which half the wine had been drained already. The man wiped his moustache with a napkin and rose to greet Will. Further courtesies followed, with Will reassuring the police chief of his stabilised health and refusing the proffered wine. It would only spoil his memory of earlier.

"Your note said you needed to speak to me urgently, commander."  
  
The man nodded gravely and waited in silence while the plates were cleared away and fresh candles set on the table. "Do you know what time of the year it is, signore?" Will frowned at him. "Why, it's February."  
  
"Yes, but do you know what that means for our city?"  
  
"Ah. You mean the carnival. Banned for decades now though, isn’t that so?"

"By the Austrians. Indeed." Coggiola shook his head. He looked tired, a grey-coloured version of the bright and boisterous presence Will had encountered the day before. "What a humiliation all that was. And now, with Risorgimento long behind us, our great festival languishes in the pages of history. We still celebrate, but, well... discreetly. The glory days are gone." The police chief rubbed at the pained crease between his brows.

Will allowed the man his moment of silent pain. "Sir, your matter," he said at last.

"Yes, of course," Coggiola sighed. "Our city has been brought low, Mr Graham. We were once the greatest republic the world had ever known. Something now threatens to bring us lower still. To make Venice not only a poor and subjugated place, but a monstrous one as well." He paused again and took a swig of his wine. He hesitated. "For the past three years," he said finally, slowly, "an incident has taken place. Every February a body—"

Will shook his head and clenched his fists under the table. "No, commander. I ask that you say no more now. Please. I cannot help you. Even if one puts aside matters of jurisdiction, I simply haven't got the time. Or the inclination. I intend to complete this tour and return home as planned, if not sooner. Good night."

Will rose and reached for his things. Coggiola didn't move, merely eyed him through the burning candles. His eyes sparkled like coal in his thick round face — Will had seen that same look in Crawford's. It had been there every time Will had tried to say no. A dread of what would now follow crept under his skin.

"Before your arrival, I had a correspondence with your superiors," Coggiola said, reaching into his coat. "I have had my answer. I believe this one is yours."

Will stared at the telegram the police chief slid across the table. He picked it up with shaking fingers. Parts of the message leapt up from the paper and landed like slaps. 

> _Important. Politically prudent. International prestige. Moral obligation.  
>  Florence, Rome, Paris dates postponed._  
>  _Further resources wired._  
>  _Remain until recalled._
> 
> _Godspeed.  
>    
>  Crawford_

Will cast the telegram aside and sank back into his chair. He saw the treasure chest of his simple wants caught in the coming tide: to see Abigail again; to walk his dogs in the fields behind his humble little house in Putney; to hide from the world and the contents of his head. All of it swept away. He stared at the weeping procession of wax down the candle stems. The chattering of tipsy voices about him had grown muddy, distant.

"Mr Graham," Coggiola's voice reached him. "Mr Graham, here." Will reached for the wine he was being handed and drank it down in thick gulps. The police chief leaned across the table and let his earnestness spill forth. "Signore, I regret that this isn't what you want but just imagine: another life saved through your great talents. This year's horror has yet to arrive. You may be able to prevent it."

At what price, Will thought. His head was beginning to ache again, so soon.

"Besides," the commander continued his argument. "you could not ask for a better, more welcoming city to lend your aid to. You must have already seen, through Count Lecter's hospitality—"

Will looked up on hearing that name. He didn't want to know any more about the case, at least not tonight. "What can you tell me about him, Commander Coggiola? About the count."

Coggiola raised an eyebrow at this sudden interest. He poured himself more wine and shrugged. "The greater a man's wealth, the fewer questions can be asked. I know no more than most, and even that through hearsay."

Will waited. After a moment the police chief indulged him.

"As a boy he fled the Lithuanian commonwealth from the advancing Russian forces, though what became of his family, no one can say. He arrived in Venice from Florence some ten years ago and bought that splendid palazzo of his from the Count of Chambord."

"A man of his wealth and talents ought to have started a family by now," Will said. "Yet he appears so thoroughly alone." The last words ricocheted painfully around his own heart.

"A year or two ago there was a lady. Quite the striking blonde beauty, too. An American, new money. There was talk of an engagement but it all seemed so..." The commander tugged absently at his moustache and frowned. "You see, they paraded themselves about all the grand balls and dinner parties and at the operas and..."

"And what?" Will asked.

Coggiola waved a hand about, flustered. "Who am I to say? You have far more insight into men's hearts, signore. You can guess what it was like."

Will could guess, could see it: the gilded pastiche of it all. What he could not see was the woman's face when she took her leave. Were there tears? Will couldn't imagine tears.

"Do you know why the count wished to be introduced to me?"  
The police chief shook his head. "That I do not know, Mr Graham. Curiosity, I had imagined."

They finished their wine and shook hands on the doorstep, Will's grudging hand crushed in the commander's grip.

"So— tomorrow morning then. At the Ospedale Civile. Your hotel will direct you." Coggiola clasped Will by the shoulder. "And signore: bring your strongest stomach."

\----

Will slumped onto his hotel bed. The mattress springs whined a mournful complaint and a puff of mould-scented dust floated up from the coverlet. Through the wall came the croupy cough of the guest next door. Beneath Will's window, drunken voices argued and laughed, then argued again.

Despite the earlier abundance of it, his body yearned for sleep. Still he could not rest until he had penned at least a draft of his telegram to Crawford. Inappropriate. Not as agreed. What of my duties in London.

Naturally he could not write: "Abigail will miss me." He didn't know if that was true. Pleas and arguments would fall on deaf ears in any case. But Will could at least tell himself he tried.

He opened his briefcase to reach for pen and paper and breathed out a laugh of surprise: tucked between the pages of his notes, the red camellia gazed up at him like a solitary crimson eye.

Will extracted it carefully. He cupped it in both palms, as if he might drink it up, and brought the fading blossom to his nose. He tried to catch its scent but there was none to be found — only the first faint note of plant decay.

Will discovered that he was smiling and that the smile refused to budge, as it had when he'd first opened Abigail's letter. The telegram could wait until morning. Will set the flower on his bedside table and lay down. Hands folded beneath his cheek, he gazed at this gift, one of so many already, and drifted back to wine and food and warm fires, to a difficult yet natural conversation between equals.

If tomorrow he was to sail into the dark unknown of Coggiola's case, he had at least found his oar. Will slept and dreamt again.

The scales of the sea-stag shimmered in the moonlight as it galloped through the labyrinthine canals of the floating city.


	4. Theatre

Will crawled from some grave-deep dream into a room that was just as sepulchral. Sweat and the early morning chill had conspired to turn his bed into a cold swamp and he shivered beneath the damp sheets, breathing raggedly. His half-seeing eyes muddied everything about him into a gray- brown mire — only a spot of red at his bedside stood out, sharp and defined. His reality had returned, with all of its symptoms.

He staggered out of bed and towards the window. He drew back the curtains and dragged his palms through the condensation on the glass to clear the view or clear his mind with the cold sensation. No grand crimson vistas greeted him outside, no graceful bridges. Only a silent, deserted calle beside a narrow canal, beneath a strip of sky heavy with thick clouds that gathered again overnight. Had last evening, with its crisp sunset chased by a moonlit night, been a dream within a dream?

The sound of muted voices came from below. A group of revellers emerged from around the corner, all suppressed laughter and chatter, all swish and whisper of kaleidoscopic fabrics trailing the pavements. They drifted in a tight cluster past Will's window, passing a bottle between them. A man separated from their flock. He paused by the canal, his back to Will. Was he about to relieve himself? The man's shoulders lurched suddenly and his back spasmed as if he were retching, though he was silent. His companions did not wait for him, did not even turn. They vanished behind another corner and the man was alone in the half-light of the street, alone with Will.

The man didn't vomit, but continued shaking, or was being shaken by some unseen force. He'll fall, Will thought. He'll stagger and fall into the freezing water.

Will fumbled with the latch to pry open the widow. He'd call to the man, ask him if he needed aid. He leaned out to do just that when the man spun around and looked up, straight at Will. Dead man, dead smile. Hands digging spasmodically into the bloody wounds that riddled his body. The dead arms thrust up to Will, to heaven, soaked red to the elbow. The familiar dead face grinned and mouthed: See?

Will staggered back, covered his face whole and choked back a moan. Dream or reality, he wanted this to end. He slammed the window and threw the curtains shut. He wouldn't look down again.

Nor would he go back into bed, into that horror-birthing cesspool. He snatched his coat from the cupboard, pulled a pillow from the bed and laid down on the carpet. He curled beneath the coat and shut his eyes and tried to think of his soft bed at the palazzo, his ship of safety that had carried him to gentler dreams.

He woke some hours later full of bitter thoughts, most of them directed at Jack Crawford. When did the correspondence with Coggiola take place? Was it before Will departed from London? Crawford knew Will would be reticent to engage in whatever case the Venetians had for him but volunteered his services anyway. It would be harder to say no once Will was here, far from home and purposeless with further lectures on hold. He wanted to commit all this bile to his telegram. In the end he wrote nothing more than a curt acknowledgement that he'd agreed to look at the case file. He'd give it some perfunctory attention, offer a few tips and then disengage himself, duty done.   
  
He didn't need fresh nightmares, not now.

\-----

The building's facade was so absurdly ornate that Will had to check the sign near the door twice before entering to ensure he'd arrived at a hospital and not a cathedral. Inside, he walked up a broad staircase and wondered where he might find Coggiola. For a few minutes he shuffled aimlessly along a wide corridor striped from above with dusty beams of light. Rosy-cheeked sisters in crisp white wimples moved past him, some of them pushing in a wheeled chair some poor sick wretch. Moans and coughs of the ill drifted in from nearby wards.

Will saw the police chief at last, strutting forth briskly with an armful of files and two men in tow, one shorter and older than the other. Somehow Will knew that the men always travelled as a pair.

"Mr Graham, you have found us!" Coggiola boomed while still half way down the hallway.

"Good morning, commander. I ought to have asked last night, but: why meet here?" Will said when his party came closer. The surroundings would do little to help him recover from the trials of early morning. Many people would see him fit to be admitted.

"Two reasons, signore. Firstly, sections of our own headquarters are under repair — a flood, of course. Some of our records are therefore being held here for safekeeping. Secondly, allow me to introduce you to Dr Prezzo," Coggiola gestured with his papers to the shorter of the pair, "and to Dr Cella. They assist the force on complex criminal cases and have been invaluable to the matter we're about to discuss with you."

The two men bowed in quick succession and mumbled a greeting in Italian, Will realising at once that they did not speak a word of English. He nodded in return and averted his head from a pair of gazes that weighed on him with the morbid curiosity he was accustomed to.

"Now, let us first find a place to settle ourselves," Coggiola said, moving off again. "The good doctors' cabinet is in use and we need somewhere to spread out." Prezzo and the chief exchanged a few words. "Indeed. The operating chamber is empty just now. Follow us, signore."

\----  
  
The operating room was a small, starkly empty amphitheatre domed with a skylight and populated with tiered benches encircling the room's centrepiece: a thick wooden table, darkened in places through its wet and gruesome use. Trace scent of blood and chloroform permeated the air and settled in Will's lungs.

The lowest of the benches had been equipped with desktops wide enough to write on, and this is where they settled, Will flanked by Prezzo and Cella, Coggiola stood before them. Will's eyes drifted again and again past the police chief's shoulder, to the bare wooden slab.

Coggiola spread out three leather binders before them and domed his fingertips over the first. A crease formed between his brows as he leaned forward to speak. "Mr Graham, before I begin, you must understand something. There is but one thing on which my men and I agree: the crimes documented within these pages do not reflect our city. Whoever committed them is mad and hates Venice and everything she stands for. Will you keep that in mind, signore?"

Will shook his head. "I cannot do that." Truths would come to him regardless, unbiased and unbidden. He ignored Coggiola's deepened scowl and beckoned with a weary hand for the man to begin.

Coggiola huffed a short breath and launched into his account.  
"Three winters ago a member of our night watch came across an unmanned gondola drifting along one of the rios in Castello. By the time his colleagues reached him, the man was beside himself with distress."

The commander flung open the first binder.

The body in the photograph lay on a wooden slab not unlike the one in the theatre. The arms had been twisted too far behind the head, the calves bent back to align with the thighs. Will could hear the snap and crackle of cartilage as the limbs were arranged and bound with rope into position. Was the man alive when this was being done to him? Is that why his neck was flung to such a desperate angle? The bulging milky eyes stared up at Will. The chest and abdominal cavity had been split open and thoroughly hollowed out.

"His torso wasn't like this when he was found," Will said, almost to himself. Coggiola looked at his colleagues. "No, it was not," he replied haltingly.

Prezzo nodded at the police chief and reached into the binder. He slid out a large pencil drawing and placed it before Will.

Will held it up.

The body lay mounted in the gondola, on some type of elevation draped with fabric. An abundance had been heaped into the dead man's chest and belly: sea urchins and ivy, fish bones and fruit. A man hollowed out, like a tree trunk turned vessel, and made to haul life. A human cornucopia. A floating feast.

Will touched his fingers to the sketch. "How I wish this had been done in colour," he heard himself mutter and felt all three in the room stare at him, appalled. He looked up. "This man was —"

"Arranged as a beast fit for a roast, yes," Coggiola interrupted, gravely. "His identity was never discovered. No missing persons claims and no witnesses beyond the watchmen, whom I've sworn to silence. An utter dead end. We assume he was a tourist. Small mercies in all this: the anonymity of the victim and the manner in which he was found helped us avoid public disquiet. The same cannot be said for the second discovery, which came almost exactly a year later, at the start of Carnevale. Happened upon by drunken merrymakers."

The second binder flew open. Another photograph, this one taken in situ.

An arch over a covered passageway. Suspended from it, on two lengths of rope: a man and a woman. Holding hands — not limply, but with arms raised and held by some reinforcement in an elegant gesture, as if the man were about to press a kiss to his lady's hand. Dark hair hung over the woman's face. A hat drooped over the man's. In splendid baroque garb, they could have been mistaken for marionettes, were it not for the rope about their necks and the holes in their chests.

"Carlo and Francesca Zatti," the police chief said. "He a banker and a patron of the arts, she a well-known socialite."

"Their gesture?" Will asked and lifted his arm, to imitate the male corpse.

Dr Cella looked to Will and grabbed for his hand. "Minuetto," he said with a wry smile and hummed an orderly little tune.

Will yanked his hand from the sudden dance and frowned at the man. He shunted away. He looked at the photograph again and brought a finger down over the black emptiness gaping in the male corpse's chest — as if he could fill it.

"And— their hearts?"  
  
"Gone," Coggiola said under his moustache. "Gone and replaced with— with lanterns, signore."

"Lanterns."

"Small lanterns, suspended from their bones," the police chief replied.

Prezzo pulled out a notebook and drew a rough sketch: first a human ribcage, lower ribs cut back or removed to make room. Then the lantern, twine pulled through the loop atop its cover, strung between and tied to the first set of ribs. The doctor paused, then doodled in a few crude insects swooping about the page. Absurd as it was, it helped Will see the scene: the twin disembodied lights flickering in an early morning mist perfumed with smoked flesh. The tipsy hoard drawn in, to join the moths already dancing their minuet about the flames.

Will rubbed at his temples. Something moved behind the commander. The Zattis rose up from the wooden slab, faces still obscured. They curtsied and bowed. Will closed his eyes.

"The lanterns. They were lit?" he asked.

The police chief nodded with a sigh. "They were. The witnesses were drawn in by the light as much as by the smell."

"Your suspects, commander," Will said quietly.

Coggiola looked between the two doctors, who shifted uncomfortably in their seats. "None. A butcher interrogated that first winter, soon exonerated. A case years ago in Florence bore some resemblance to our own, but found no lead. As for the Zatti couple: we had hoped a story of a double suicide might prove convincing, but alas, gossip soon spread that a monster had slaughtered two well-to-do Venetians in a most gruesome manner, and would surely kill again. The Zatti case, Mr Graham, is the cause of the unease, dare I say hysteria, you witnessed at the Istituto on the day of your arrival."

And so Will had his answer to his reception at the lecture.

Prezzo and the police chief exchanged a few words. The doctor made a strange movement with his hand: a wave, as a slithering snake. Coggiola frowned and reached into the Zatti file. He pulled out a snippet cut from a newspaper. "The creative among the gossip-mongers have even gone as far as to give this madman a name."

The cartoon was crude but clear, and Will's heart paused for a beat when he picked it up for examination. A hideous sea monster, risen up from the lagoon, was jabbing its claws into the body of a terrified, writhing woman whilst onlookers ran in horror below. The label beneath the drawing screamed:

> _"Leviatano Veneziano!"_

Will felt like he was fading or falling, back into some dream of drowning. Bodies shifted and twitched on the operating table behind him. He wanted to leave, to move among comfortable, solid reality again.

Coggiola, meanwhile, reached for the third binder. "The last case. Again, a year later. The only scene to be disturbed. The victim was found in a flooded crypt by an elderly church keeper, a woman not in her wits. The discovery claimed whatever was left of her sanity and she's since been sent off to the asylum on San Servolo."

"Commander," Will interrupted, "if you'll forgive me, but might we resume reviewing your files tomorrow? I— I must admit I am still not in ideal health."

Coggiola was silent for a moment, then nodded slowly. "Forgive me, Mr Graham," he said, "I am rushing you through these horrors only because of the urgent nature of our predicament. As I told you, we have every reason to believe this monster will strike again, and soon."

"Tomorrow," Will reassured him. He shut the Zatti file before him and stared down at the smooth leather binder, the only safe place for him to rest his eyes. "In the meantime, if you could write down for me the precise locations of the first two crime scenes. I shall visit them today."

"Tomorrow then," Coggiola said, appeased. "But signore, I must ask: having heard all this, have you so far formed some idea of what this man might be trying to show us?"

Will hadn't, not yet. Perhaps not what.

Perhaps: to whom.

\---

Coggiola said his good-byes and headed off upstairs on further business with his duo of doctors. Clutching the addresses he'd been handed, Will walked down the hospital's corridors in a daze.

"Mr Graham," a voice called out and made Will's heart thud. He turned to find a now familiar figure stood in a beam of light that shimmered with a thousand particles of dust.

"I cannot say I'm glad to see you here," the count said. "Are you unwell again?"

Will moved towards him mechanically and without thought, as if that were the only option left to him in the world. "No, I— I am well. Good morning."

"Good morning. Then you must be here on some business connected with our good police chief. He's a frequent visitor. Have I found you arriving or departing?"

"Departing," Will said, and wondered at his lackadaisical reply. Were he to say more, the murders he was carrying inside him might rattle out and crash in a heap of bones and gore at the count's polished shoes.

"If you are well and departing then we've found an ideal moment to make dinner plans. Is tomorrow our last chance?"

"No. Or rather— not anymore. For the time being, my stay in Venice has become indeterminate in length."

That drew a pause from the count and Will couldn't grasp its meaning. No discernible expression accompanied it. Will's hand felt damp around Coggiola's notes. He didn't want to look down at it, lest he see blood. And so he spoke, to fill the seconds and to keep himself grounded to some kind of reality.

"Is this where you operate, Count Lecter?"

The man watched him as he had last night: to the exclusion of everything else, and so steadily that Will felt he could tether himself to that gaze, even if he could not meet it above the rim of his glasses.

"On occasion, yes," the count replied.

"With an audience?"  
  
"With an audience. All surgeons do, though not always. You must know this."

Will did know. He saw himself on the table, rising from an ether death to a hundred eyes staring at him. The hacksaw held above him. The rising applause. The standing ovation for the dead man. What a pitiful audience the dead in those files had had. Such a display, so much effort, wasted on night watchmen, drunks and mad old women.

Will felt himself sway. "Do your patients ever wake on the table?" he said hoarsely.

The count stepped closer and laid a hand on Will's arm. "Mr Graham, you are unwell. Will you take a walk with me?"

"I cannot. No. You've done far too much already and you must have more pressing business to attend to. A surgeon playing nurse to— to—" he didn't know what to call himself.

"Mr Graham," the count's voice dropped, but moved to a sharper tone. The hand on Will's arm didn't falter. "I beg you to wait for me outside. I have something to discuss with a colleague. I will only be a moment."

Will did look at him then. It was that or head back to his hotel room with an armful of death. He nodded.

The sprawling campo outside the hospital was nearly deserted and the air had grown crisp, with an arctic bite. Both seemed to do Will some good and he stood himself beneath the statue of some equestrian general or condottiero, Coggiola's note now stashed safely in his briefcase.

A few minutes later Hannibal Lecter emerged from the hospital, the head of his walking stick glinting in the weak winter sun. In his fine fur-collared coat he may as well have been one of the marble lions that strode forth from the building's facade. Will's aching head wondered whether the heavy garment crushed another blossom beneath its weight. He felt better just for seeing this strange man, this solid presence so well wed to his surroundings, as if he'd been striding the Venetian calli for centuries.

The count approached Will with that curious impression of a smile he had, both sensuous and restrained.

"I have reviewed your patient file. The last course of treatment I prescribed seemed efficacious enough. Have you had breakfast?"

Will admitted to nothing more than a hasty coffee at the hotel.

"In that case," the count said. "I propose we go on a short tour of Venetian secrets. I'll give you a clue about the first one: it comes coated in sugar."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes:  
> \- The facade of the hospital in Venice is indeed [ridiculous](http://2.citynews-veneziatoday.stgy.ovh/~media/original-hi/23395274158971/ospedale-civile-2.jpg)  
> \- Forensic photography was apparently already in use by the 1870s  
> \- Here's a (non-murdery) [minuet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCy1NvvHNUM). Gesture around 1:26  
> \- In case it isn't abundantly obvious: Prezzo and Cella = Price and Zeller.


	5. Pierrot

_"Watch yourself all your life in a mirror and_  
_you'll see Death at work like bees in a glass hive.”_

\- Jean Cocteau

 

They found themselves at the marble counter of a tiny pastry shop. Whilst the count placed their order, Will gazed out the windows at another campo, this one crowned with a towering facade of what he dearly hoped was a church. The hospital and the visions in Coggiola's leather binders hung on him like bad dreams.

Two tiny cups of coffee were set before them, followed by two plates holding several round pastries richly dusted with sugar.

"This is the second time you've ventured to improve my health with food and drink, Count Lecter," Will said. "Are all Venetian patients prescribed a therapy of wine and fried dough?"

The count's eyes glinted with amusement. "The contents of a reputable pasticceria can be as restorative to one's health as those of any pharmacy."

"Tell it to the next man with gout, doctor," Will said, but took up a pastry without further objection. The first bite caused him to stifle a groan of delight. "Oh. These are still warm."

The spark of merriment in Count Lecter's eyes seemed to turn into one of pleasure. "Frittelle di carnevale. Though I would beg of you not refer to them by that name. These delicacies are practically contraband."

"You have nothing to fear, I will have forgotten the name in the next few minutes," Will said and paused for another bite. "Contraband? Why so?"

"The frittelle are the first secret I wanted to share with you. Bakers still produce entire mountains of them under another name, despite our annual celebration being forbidden. You know about the carnival ban?"

Will nodded, mouth full.

"Over-indulgence aside," the count continued, "few of life's woes cannot be ameliorated with the pleasures of a feast or a dance. Or a splendid view. And just now my view could hardly be improved."

Those last words had emerged while the count's eyes were fixed on Will. Will blinked up, face grown heated, though perhaps not from the remnants of his fever.

"La chiesa, Signor Graham," the count said at last, amused, and inclined his head towards the shop windows. Granules of sugar glinted for a moment in the corners of his mouth like shards of diamonds, then were swept away with a napkin.

"Right," Will muttered, and looked out once more at the soaring church. The pale sun streaked its slim white columns and, high above, sea birds swooped above the heads of its carved marble saints.

Will’s mind drifted to the colourful revellers beneath his window that morning and the nightmare that chipped itself off from their merry band. "Pleasure and beauty are all well and good until you scratch their surface and find they disguise all matter of ruin," he said, all too conscious of how grey and grim he sounded next to Count Lecter’s apparent joie de vivre.

"Disguise or contain?" he count asked between sips of his coffee. "Where beauty and ruin are rent from each other, we must work to make them walk hand in hand again."

This time Will’s mind conjured up an image of Carlo and Francesca Zatti, hollow chests aglow in the low morning light. Did the drunken group who found them think they'd discovered something beautiful? Before the reality of death and dismemberment set in?

"Consider our magnificent church," Will's companion resumed, having cleared his plate. "It may contain gruesome piles of saintly bones, but it is also home to a breathtaking altar by Bellini. The doors are shut today, but I promise to show it to you one day."

"One day—" Will breathed a short laugh. "Count, you speak as if I've made Venice my permanent residence. When I mentioned an indefinite stay, I meant that I hope to be home as soon as possible. And I don’t expect to return."

"One cannot hope without uncertainty. And life has a way of surprising us, Mr Graham. I won't demand that you tell me what it is Comandante Coggiola has asked for your help with, for it would hardly be proper. But I would like to know what personal principles persuaded you to compromise your health and well-being and acquiesce to his request."

"It wasn't just— " Will rubbed at his temples. It wasn't persuasion, by Crawford or the police chief or his own principles. At least, not entirely. It was necessity.

He recited his motto, directly from where it was carved into the tissues of his heart.

"I know I have a certain talent. It obligates me to save lives."

The count made a small considering noise. "And so the dutiful and desirable debutante whirls about the dance floor with every murderous suitor who would have her. Never mind that her feet soon begin to bleed."

Will peered into the tiny black puddle of his coffee, struck again by stark honesty of that image. Jack Crawford filled his dance card for this _danse macabre_ and Will would continue to whirl to its tune until— until what?

\----

Outside the shop Will collided with a tall young man in a burgundy coat. The man unfurled a toothy grin and tipped his hat in apology. Then he spotted Will's companion.

"Conte Lecter, buongiorno!"  
  
The count bowed his head. "Signor Marino, how do you do?"

The man called Marino flicked his eyes at Will. "Ah, your friend isn't local? Very well, I'll speak English for his benefit. I am glad to see you, count. I expect you are still attending the ball this Friday?" A cool nod from the count. "Excellent. I loathe to be a braggart, but I'll be debuting my latest piece there. The Duchess has kindly agreed."

"I look forward to hearing it then, signore."

The man turned to Will, who stood sullen and silent beside the count. "Will you introduce us? I should like to know if your friend speaks English after all. Or any language for that matter."

The man chortled at his own remark. "Of course. This is Mr Will Graham, visiting us from London." The count's tone was only a shade warmer than the icy Venetian air.

The toothy grin reappeared, incredulous. "Not the Will Graham! Well, this is an unexpected treat. Are you here to catch our leviathan, signore? To slay our very own Venetian beast?"

"No, I'm here on a pastry sampling expedition," Will replied, staring at the man's loud cravat. His blood was turning cold. It wasn't that Marino had blathered out the purpose of Will's extended stay in Venice. Count Lecter was no fool and must have made the same guess already. But Will had no desire, just now, to be reminded of the task he faced. His walk with the count had been a secretly hoped for escape away from the case.

"Well, well! A hunter of killers and a wit to boot." Marino reached out a gloved hand and tapped Will's temple with one finger. "Quite the mind, hm?"

\-----

The temple-tapper said his good-byes. Count Lecter waited until he was safely out of hearing range.

"He is as discourteous as his musical compositions are intolerable. I apologise on his behalf."

Will gave a shrug. "There's no need. I've grown accustomed to such— taking of liberties. Could we please continue?"

They moved on, following a quiet canal. Will was glad for the sharp air that tempered his heated brain, and for being once more alone with his companion.

“Tourists who have themselves painted or photographed before the splendid monuments and cathedrals of this city," the count said carefully after a moment, "do so to feel some sense of entitlement to them. They make a claim to something beyond their own accomplishments and understanding."

Will weighed the metaphor in his mind. “In my case, they would think twice about laying their claim if they knew what lay within."

“You don't think they'd be pleasantly surprised? Thrilled even?”

"I cannot say. None have stepped far enough inside. But I know myself well enough. Besides, unlike Venice, I don't wish for all this attention."

"I'm not sure Venice wishes for it either. It is unavoidable. Like this city, you are unique."

"I wish I weren't."

"You are unique for a reason. If everyone was born with your gift, the human race would fail within a generation. Too few men, having such an acute understanding of its varied sufferings, could inflict life onto others."

The count's words cut through Will cleanly, like a surgeon's blade. It took a moment for the pain they caused to register but when it did, he had to stop, almost breathless. A shiver passed through him and he gazed into the milky green waters of the canal. "In that case, Mr Darwin is right and I am doomed to extinction," he said roughly, bitterly. His thoughts turned to Abilgail, to his conversation last night with the count on matters of wardship. To the illusions of home he had harboured.

The count stepped closer. Will couldn't bare to look up but felt the man’s warmth, the solidity of his presence and that gaze again, unreadable but thorough. Will let himself be held in it. It was comforting. The hand that touched his arm in the hospital had been as steady and calm as Count Lecter's eyes. Will wished for it again, with a longing that shocked him.

"You say that as if your fate were sealed,” the count said quietly. “Life has a way of surprising us."

Those words again, spoken above the soft splash of water and the mournful cawing of the gulls. Will caught the words and tucked them away for safekeeping. Another gift.

And then the hand was there, gently cupping about his elbow.

"Come. Let us continue. I've shown you one carnival secret. It's time you discover another."

\----

They reached another unassuming shop just as the sky began to break into a thin drizzle. They stopped beneath a tarnished gold sign shaped like a pair of open scissors. Will stared up at the sign warily.

The count paused with his hand on the door handle. "Are you still amenable to dining with me, Mr Graham?"

Will tried to temper the willingness in his reply. "I'd promised, had I not? And the meals you've served me thus far haven't disappointed."

"The masked ball Marino spoke of is being hosted by Duchess Komeda, a good friend of mine," the count said. "Her taste in food and entertainment is impeccable, and I'm certain on my request she would accommodate one more guest. Will you attend?"

Will pictured himself amongst the crushing crowds of masked strangers, under the bright lights. Caught up in more noisy, inane chatter from the likes of Marino.

"That's— no. Not something I would enjoy. I would much rather—" _Dine alone with you_ , is what Will wished to say but held his tongue. "Aren't carnival parties forbidden?"

"The ban doesn't extend to discreet private celebrations. The upper echelon of the city's police are usually in attendance at the Duchess’ ball, including your own police chief."

"The matter Coggiola entrusted me with," Will said weakly, "is likely to occupy my evenings. I'm sorry."

Disappointment stole over him. Had he managed to decline the count's invitation to dinner entirely? It occurred to him that after they parted ways today Will might have no cause to see this man again. Why should that prospect so aggrieve him? He pushed the thought aside, unwilling to examine its whys and wherefores.

Count Lecter watched him for a moment. "In that case, may I ask something of you?"

Will turned his eyes up at his companion. Drops of rain had settled on the collar of his coat and Will wondered vaguely how the damp fur would feel against his palm. He nodded.

The count gave him a small, pleased smile. "For only the next few minutes, will you do your best to pretend that you have accepted my invitation?"

That Will could manage.

\----

Every sound in the shop was dampened by layers of oriental rugs and racks of splendid costumes from another century. Glass display cases brimmed with wigs on wooden head-shaped mounts and with delicately embroidered fans, gloves and shoes.

A small, bespectacled man emerged from the back, preceded in his greeting by a friendly tan- coloured terrier. Will knelt down to greet the dog whilst Count Lecter and the shopkeep spoke quietly in Venetian, apparently about gloves, of which the count proceeded to try on at least half a dozen.

"Mr Graham."

Will looked up from his task of rubbing the belly of the enthusiastic canine shop assistant.

"This way," the count said. Will followed him to the back of the room.

A thick velvet curtain was parted by the shopkeep to reveal a wall hung to the ceiling with masks of every shape and variety. In their midst, in old gilded frames, hung a mirror.

The count stood aside, hands folded before him atop his walking cane. "You promised me you'd pretend. Pretend, then, you are here to choose your disguise for Friday's festivities."

Hundreds of still hollow eyes watched Will from the wall, staring out of black leather, painted paper and porcelain. He swallowed and his heartbeat picked up pace.

"Do men wear these to escape from themselves?" he asked. He wasn't certain whether the thought of doing so himself filled him with dread or thrilled him.

"Oh, more than that," the count replied. "If a man's reflection is nothing more than watching death at work, then a mask helps him escape that which most defines him."

"His mortality," Will said quietly.

"To ban masks seems to me a cruelty. To deny man even this fragile defence..."  
  
Will looked to his companion, whose face was as still and inscrutable as any of the masks. "You first, count."

"I would, but I have a number of these already." the count said with another small smile. "Please. There's no need to rush in your choice."

Will reached up to touch the mask in the lower right, the one with a troubled brow, crimson lips and a solitary black tear set into a slim white face.

"This one. Pierrot, is it not?"  
  
The count crossed over and removed the weeping face from its hook.

"Or Pedrolino, yes. And why would you choose to be a naive lover, Mr Graham?"

Will was neither of those things. "It is merely a part to be played, is it not? I don't have to confess whether the mask changes or reveals my nature." He removed his hat. Now that he'd made his choice, of course he'd try it on.

The count uttered a short sound of agreement. "With a different face, a different name. What shall we call you then? Hold the mask while I tie it, please." He moved to stand behind Will.

Will put his fingers to the cool porcelain chin. He considered the question, regarding his covered face in the faded mirror. What was the secret name, the name hardly anyone had ever called him? Was his father the last one to speak it? He'd whispered it on his death bed, on a rattled breath, and with that the last of what Will might have called family had been extinguished.

"Will. Just call me Will," he said in a strained voice.

The count tightened the velvet ribbon to fasten the mask in place. One hand fell to Will's shoulder, heavy and warm. The fingers of the other brushed lightly over the mask's smooth cheek. He leaned in and, low and soft, spoke the name into Will's ear.

Will was glad for the mask. Beneath its safety he, too, let himself utter a name.


	6. Carnem Levare

They emerged from a covered alley onto a broad, half-deserted promenade that stretched along the lagoon. Will broke step with his companion and walked up to the water's edge. The drizzle brought with it a mist that hung like countless ghosts over the murky surface and shrouded the walls encircling a distant island.

"It looks like a fortress," Will said of the island, half to himself. Then added: "It looks like a dream."

After all, Will's entire day may as well have been a dream. From the early morning nightmare, to the exquisite corpses in Coggiola's files, to the silent army of masks behind the velvet curtain. He felt as if he'd been skimming the surface of consciousness while his body floated above. With each passing minute the entire city seemed to be drifting out to sea, ferrying him further from home.

The count's voice came from behind, low and distinct through the ambient music of the promenade.

"You are looking at Isola di San Michele. Venice's sister and her necropolis. Each year, one day in November, thousands of living souls sail out into the autumnal gloom, carrying lanterns and flowers to their beloved dead."

Will closed his eyes so that all that remained of the world was the voice and the image it painted: the flickering festival of mourning on the water.

"The smell of tallow and late season blooms." The voice again, closer now, almost as close as it had been among the masks. "The solemn faces of a thousand tourists returning from a brief sojourn to their future home."

"And they all come back empty-handed," Will said softly, eyes still shut. "The dead have nothing to give back."

"Don't they?"

Will turned to answer and found himself face to face with his companion, so close that he staggered. His shoes slipped on the wet paving stones and lost their grip. His heart gave one panicked thud, a walking stick clattered to the ground and then two gloved hands were grasping at the lapels of Will's coat and pulling him back.

Somewhere behind them a passerby gasped. Will, too, gasped. There was nowhere to go. Fall or let himself be drawn in. He was suspended, and so close that he could see the fine drops of rain settling on Count Lecter's pale lashes, so close that he could begin to give names to the colour of his mouth: rosewood, garnet, blood.

 _He’s beautiful, he’s beautiful_ , something cried out hysterically in Will. And that was as perilous as plunging into the icy water.

"There. I've caught you," the count murmured, sugar and black coffee on his breath. His eyes were moving carefully over Will's face, as if re-assembling it from broken pieces. Will nodded idiotically. His heart refused to stop thrashing about.

The moment passed. The count stepped away, having walked Will away from the edge, and collected his walking stick. They were strolling again and Will was staring down at the mechanical progression of his feet.

"You must know why I've been detained here," he said after a few steps.

"I have guessed," the count said. "The carnival murders are much gossiped about in Venice. Some even take bets on who will be the next victim. Meanwhile, Coggiola's reputation is declining by the day. Once you landed in his lap, how could he pass you up?" The count fell silent whilst they scaled and descended the steps of a narrow bridge. "How does he compare to your other monsters, our Leviathan?"

Will shook his head. "I don't know him yet. I don't know who he's speaking to. Perhaps he doesn't know either. Perhaps he's— fishing."

"What is he fishing for, Mr Graham?"

Mr Graham again. Not Will. Will was before. Will was pretending. Will wanted to hear his name again, spoken in the same voice that told him about the flotilla of mourning boats, with their lights and their flowers.

"The same thing most of us fish for. A connection." Will stopped again. "I'm sorry. I cannot say more. The police chief— it's him I owe these answers. And I've barely begun to consider what these murders mean."

"Naturally," the count said. "Nor can you accept my invitation to the ball. Duty for you seems to be inextricable from self-denial."

Will felt helplessness rising like a tide. The words sounded like the beginning of a good-bye. Will had been obstinate and strange and was about to be given up on again.

"I'm afraid I have another appointment soon."

There it is, Will thought bitterly. "I understand," he muttered. "I have some things to attend to as well. Thank you for seeing to my health— again. The walk has done me some good."

Count Lecter gave him a faint smile. "I am glad to hear it. And should desire briefly override duty, and you change your mind, I will hope to hear from you before Friday."

Will nodded, staring past his shoulder. "Of course."

"Good day, Mr Graham. I wish you well in your enterprise," the count added, then peered up to the sky. Will thought he saw his nostrils flare. "I believe it will snow tomorrow."

And with that he tipped his hat, gave a slight bow and departed. No handshake, no touch. Will was left standing on the promenade with his bundle of desires, watching the graceful figure retreat into the mist, and feeling utterly, inconsolably alone.

\----

The police chief barely got a greeting out before the questions commenced. "Did your visit to the sites of the first two crimes prove fruitful, signore?"

Will was manoeuvring himself between the bodies crammed into the stuffy office. There was Prezzo, Cella, and several other men Will had not yet met. The smoke haze from their cigars made his eyes water and he shook each extended hand unenthusiastically as he passed. All of them were

there to make themselves seem important, he thought, or to make Coggiola seem important. Or to stare at Will. He felt as he had at the lecture: a creature on display.

He declined the offered chair and stopped before a large board pinned with photographs, sketches, notes. There was the man-feast served up atop his gondola-coffin; there was a sketch he hadn't yet seen of the Zatti couple. And there was a new photograph and a new drawing entirely.

"It was fruitful enough," Will said and raised his hand to the board. "First, will you tell me about — about this?"

Coggiola let out a sigh and spoke. "The man, Baldrini, was found last February in the nave of the church of San Zaccaria. His poor widow identified what was left of him. He'd been a Veronese supplier of exotic foods to the finer establishments and households of this city. By all accounts a jovial and gregarious man. He'd been visiting Venice to fill the orders of several families who host private carnival celebrations."

Will let himself be drawn into the murk of the photograph. A pyramid of bones rose up from the floor, an elaborate construction wound together with thick rope. Will knew the rope must have been red, the better to match what spouted from the skeletal peak like an explosion of bloody lava. The man had been flayed, all muscle stripped from his legs, his own bones melded with the strange bones which held him in place. His face had been left in tact, and turned up to the heavens. Skinless arms had been thrust up ecstatically at his sides.

"The bones," Will whispered. "Sourced from the church crypt?"

The commander nodded grimly. "It would appear so. As I had told you yesterday, the scene was discovered by a half-witted church keeper, who'd been allowed to sleep on the premises."

Will touched the sketch beside the photograph. Several bones had been scattered at Baldrini's feet. They looked, Will thought, untidy. Uncharacteristic. "The church keeper tried to undo the ropes."

"Indeed. She claimed, in her own words, that she thought she could set the man free. Furthermore, when interviewed, she claims she saw a masked figure leaving the church when she entered the nave at the break of dawn."

Will turned to the police chief. "Did you ask someone to draw the figure she saw?"

"Of course," one of the commander's deputies reached into a file and handed the sketch to Will. "As you can see, it's useless. A nondescript cloaked figure in a mask."

"Did you ask her to draw the figure?" Will asked.

One of the men wedged into a chair beside Coggiola's desk let out an amused snort. The chief shot him a disapproving glare. "No, signore. For all we know, the figure may have been a figment of her disturbed imagination."

"I would like to meet with her."

"If you insist," the police chief said with some hesitation. "Although you must know that her wits have left her entirely since witnessing the horror. She has been sent to the insane asylum on San Servolo."

"I'd like to see her tomorrow if possible." "Very well."

Will stared at the photograph of the church nave. "Was there something missing from the church's usual decor? Not as a result of the crime. I mean rather— generally."

A low murmur of surprise rose amongst those gathered. "Why do you say that, signore?" Coggiola asked.

After Count Lecter had taken leave of him yesterday, Will sought out the scenes of the first murders. For a city drowning in beauty, both spots had been exceptionally plain: an ordinary narrow canal, a common alleyway. Will had idled in the freezing rain until his mind could conjure up the bodies in situ and saturate them with colour: the vibrant bounty heaped atop the gondola, the shimmering costumes and glowing hearts of the dancing couple. Both scenes had been painted onto the drabness of the season. The leviathan would have stepped back to consider his efforts, then adjusted some detail of the scene, as a woman arranges a vase of flowers to make it just so.

"The church was closed for renovations," Coggiola said when no answer was forthcoming from Will. "The altar had been removed, and many of the paintings were being cleaned as well."

The man seated to the side of the commander, the one who'd handed Will the sketch, cleared his throat pointedly. "Before you tell us any more," the police chief said, "Inspector Gatti here has a theory which he would like to share with you. It's one we've given some weight to."

Gatti took a puff of his cigar, then began on a pompous tone. "Mr Graham, we believe we may be dealing with a religious fanatic. The named victims all had decadent lifestyles and made much of Carnevale. It may be that this monster saw himself punishing them for their sin of celebrating a forbidden festival—"

"You couldn't be more wrong." Will interrupted. "I cannot tell you why your killer chose these people for his victims. It may have been a matter of convenience, or some trivial pretence. But after they were slaughtered, they were no longer human to him. Perhaps not before. They became... material. Like marble or paint to an artist."

Coggiola rose from his chair and leaned on his desk until Will could feel the weight of his glare. "You would call this man an artist? This grotesque murderer?"

The unease in the room was rising fast. Will was accustomed to such reaction and shrugged it off. He kept his eyes on the sketches pinned to the board. The first one, the one that had struck him yesterday morning, had been done in another hand — a gifted hand. Will's mind strayed for a moment, back to the dream-like walk of yesterday morning. He remembered he'd forfeited his chance to see the pictures of himself in Count Lecter's notebook. He felt a sharp spike of regret and unnamed longing.

"You're wrong, too, about him loathing Venice," Will said quietly. "He loves your city, and wants to celebrate it by making his mark upon it. He seeks to beautify it."

Another murmur rose up, this one of mixed anger and disbelief. Coggiola hushed it with a wave of his hand. "If you say so, signore. But I hope you can see how we'd find that claim shocking."

"I can only tell you what I see," Will said. "The unknown man in the gondola. Did he have any distinguishing characteristics?"

"Nothing. No scars, no birthmarks and, as you can see, not a stitch of clothing," the commander replied. "All we were able to find were a few flakes of paint under his fingernails."

"He may have been a decorator, or a craftsman of some sort," Gatti added.

"Or a painter. An artist," Will said. "And his and the Zattis' missing organs? And the flesh of the third victim?"

"We dredged canals and searched all nearby dumpsters," Coggiola said. "No trace was ever found."

Something was creeping up Will's back, a sensation that took him back to the swamp of terror that had been the Hobbs case. If the Venetian Leviathan saw his victims as less than human and used their bodies to pin up gruesome celebration... Will turned to the police chief.

"What does 'Carnevale' mean, commander?" he asked.

"The word itself?"

"The word, yes. My Latin is poor at best. Carne - meat. But the rest of it?"

Coggiola looked between his men. "Why, it means 'farewell to flesh' or 'farewell to meat', since the festivities are followed by Lent. Carne, vale. Have you not read your Byron, signore?"

Prezzo, who'd been listening intently for any fragments of the conversation he could grasp, shook his head and spoke up in apparent protest. The police chief exchanged a few words with the doctor, then turned back to Will.

"Forgive me, Dr Prezzo has corrected my error. It seems scholarship now tells us 'vale' is abbreviated from 'levare'," Coggiola said, then shifted in this chair, uneasy. "Carnem levare. 'To remove meat'."

Will stared at the police chief. He hoped desperately that he was wrong about the cause of his rising sense of dread.

\----

He sat on the edge of his narrow hotel bed, head in his hands, bracing himself for drowning in the night ahead. Pictures swam behind his eyelids: dead marionettes dancing limp-limbed around the bone-and-rope pyre of the skinned saint. From their mouths rained strips of raw meat — their own.

A soft knock startled Will from his stupor. He rose stiffly and made his way to the door.

The dusty old porter grinned at Will through the crack in the door. "Corrispondenza," he said, and held out his handful. Will blinked down at the delivery, surprised, but took it. He tipped the porter, who hobbled off down the hallway.

Will set the two packages on the bed and stood before them. One was a flat, rectangular object wrapped in ordinary brown paper and addressed to him; the other an unlabelled cube of glossy black cardboard, tied with a crimson ribbon. Will touched the ribbon and swallowed hard. He tried to blank his mind of expectation. He tore into the plain brown paper first.

His own image peered out at him from the small framed canvas, its lines crude and colours lurid. He'd been painted dressed in shiny medieval armour and, absurdly, still wearing his spectacles. In his hand he held a golden spear, poised above the head of the dragon-like creature writhing angrily beneath his feet. A damsel in distress cowered behind a shrub in the background. A note from Coggiola explained the delivery as a gift from the enthusiastic artist at Will's lecture. Will let out a rueful laugh.

He set the picture at his bedside table and reached for the second box with somewhat less steady hands.

The ribbon and the lid slipped off easily. Inside, placed carefully atop a mound of pale pink tissue, Will found two notes.

The first had been written in a script that flowed over the heavy card like a twisting stream of black ink.

> _Dear Will,_
> 
> _This is in case you surprise yourself with a change of heart. If you do not, remember: you can always pretend._
> 
> _-H_

The second note was a formal invitation from Duchess Komeda.

Will felt the warmth of blood rush to his face. He lingered a touch over the "H" of the first note. Then he reached down to part the mounds of tissue with careful fingers, as petals on a bloom, until he came face to face with a hollow-eyed, crimson-lipped, weeping Pierrot.

He bit back a smile that cracked against his best intentions. "Hello," he whispered.

Shoes kicked off, he climbed into bed and set the mask carefully before him. Before long he was picking it up, turning it again and again in his hands, lifting it up to his face. He touched the cool white cheek, where the count's fingers had travelled.

At long last he let himself set it down, next to the faded camellia he'd kept by his bed. He propped the count's note and the invitation against the ridiculous painting. Was he really still smiling? Was his face still warm?

He reached for the writing board, paper and pen, and began.

> _Dear Miss Hobbs,_
> 
> _Venice is—"_

He paused. He hardly knew where to begin.

\----

No nightmares came to Will that night. He slept and dreamt that he was drifting in a boat that circumnavigated a fortified island without gates. Soft waves lapped at walls that rose up and disappeared into the mist. Something moved and shimmered, gold and blue, just below the surface of the water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- The island Will spots in the mist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isola_di_San_Michele  
> \- A great podcast on the etymology of the word "carnival":  
> https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/celebrating-an-etymological- carnival/  
> \- By mentioning Byron, Coggiola refers to this story by ol' George. https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/beppo-a-venetian-story/  
> \- I know nothing about crime investigation proceedings in 19th century Italy. This whole chapter could be nonsense.


	7. Fever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: There is some period-specific borderline mistreatment and distress to a person with a mental illness in this chapter.

Count Lecter was right: snow came to Venice in the night and brought with it a strange hibernal hush. A sparkling white tapestry unfurled itself over piazzas, roofs and bridges and lay heaped in unguarded gondolas. Tourists and Venetians alike moved through the rare scenery as if dazed.

On his way to meet the police chief, Will too felt dazed. He'd risen with the dawn, shivering in his poorly heated room. His first waking thoughts were of the skinned man rising from an altar of bones, and of a sense of panicked urgency. Somewhere in the city the Leviathan was looking upon all of this fresh white beauty and seeing an unblemished canvas. Meanwhile the days of the carnival were slipping past and Coggiola's time to stop the next display, through Will's intervention, was running short.

Will expected to find this reality reflected in the commander's demeanour — and so it was. Coggiola met him by the water's edge and offered Will a curt tip of his hat, far from the effusive welcome he'd launched into some days ago. Will's pronouncements yesterday about the "grotesque murderer" could hardly have helped, and he thought he detected in the police chief an air of cold scepticism — particularly about what he must have perceived as a futile journey to meet a witness at an insane asylum.

Coggiola introduced the stout young man he'd arrived with. "Mr Graham, Signor Corino. Corino is an artist who assists the force in rendering crime scenes. The sketches you have seen so far have been done by his hand. He will accompany us today, and try to capture any new recollections the woman may have."

Will nodded vaguely in greeting. "It can't be easy applying your talents to such horrors." Corino gave him a pained smile. "Whatever I can do to serve justice, signore."

They set off into the icy lagoon, the boatman steering the covered gondola towards San Servolo, Venice’s island of the mad.

"Your methods aren't easy to defend before my colleagues, Mr Graham," Coggiola said after a spell of chilly silence.

"You're the one that demanded my assistance, commander," Will snapped. "If you feel the need to defend me—"

The police chief was quick to interrupt. "Now please, you mustn't think we have lost faith in you."

"No. But equally you need results, and quickly. It won't be long before another body turns up. Or bodies."

"To make my point, signore: what you have told us so far has already prompted action. I had mentioned to you a case in Florence, years ago. It had none of the... panache of our own murders, but some similar elements: missing internal organs and a body left for show. We had previously tried to connect our anonymous first victim with Florence, but to no avail. I have now called yet again upon that city's help. This time I have asked for specific information about any men connected with the arts who may have disappeared three years ago."

"I hope your query will be successful," Will said drily.

Coggiola wasn't satisfied. "Mr Graham, I see you are displeased with me. Can I prove my good faith further? Will you accept an invitation to a social engagement? There is a ball some of my distinguished colleagues are attending this Friday."

"At Duchess Komeda's, is it?"  
  
The police chief looked surprised. "You know of it?"

"I happened again upon Count Lecter at the hospital. He extended an invitation to me, and I've accepted it." It warmed Will to say it out loud. It felt like a confession.

The commander looked beyond pleased. "Oh, that is most excellent of the count. I am delighted you have found such a solid and respected man for a friend in Venice."

Will said nothing. It was clear Coggiola thought him unhinged enough to be in need of such a solid friend.

\----

They disembarked and made their approach to the main building of the sprawling asylum complex. In the snow-covered courtyard, several figures draped in grey blankets sat hunched on benches or shuffled about grimly, retracing their footsteps. Troubled eyes stared out at Will.

"It does them good," Coggiola said quietly. "The cold is said to cool their fevered brains."

Will thought of his walk with the count: the icy air and the cool-headed company bringing calm to his own head. There were some who would see him fit to be stored away on this island, along with the lost grey shadows of the courtyard.

They were met by the director of the asylum, who lead them through long murky hallways to a room lined with glass cabinets, all of them stuffed with meticulously labelled human skulls and decorative apothecary jars in twisting shapes. Will couldn't think of a worse place to interrogate a patient. The skulls' black eye sockets stared out at him from behind the glass like the masks in the costume shop.

After some minutes, the door to the room opened again and the witness appeared: an ancient, tiny bird of a woman in the asylum's grey garb, flanked by two bulky orderlies. Distress was pouring out of her and into Will, who couldn't help but swallow it up. His heart thrashed about with her fear. He was already regretting his request to come here.

They sat her down at the table. Corino opened his leather folder and laid out his drawing kit.

The woman's eyes flicked between the stone-faced men who surrounded her, but always returned to Will. She squinted her milky eyes, as if trying to discern something.

"First I will ask if she's had any new recollections about the events at San Zaccaria," Coggiola said, clearly expecting nothing of value to emerge.

Questions followed, which the woman answered in weepy, rambling statements and through twisting gestures of withered arms. Will glanced over at Corino, who sat with his pencil poised, looking distinctly bored.

"Let her see your sketch from last year. The masked figure." Will said.  
  
Corino stared at Will, then turned to the police chief. Coggiola nodded his approval.

The paper was drawn from Corino's file and slid before the woman, who stared down at it for long moments, shaking her head in her hands. Then, with unexpected swiftness, she threw herself across the table after Corino's pencil case, leaving him with just enough time to snatch from it his sharpening scalpel. The orderlies lunged for the woman's frail body. Will shot up from his seat in protest.

"Leave her, for heaven's sake — leave her!" he cried. Coggiola repeated the plea in Venetian and the men retreated. The woman dragged the case to herself, rummaged through it wildly and plucked from it the reddest pencil she could find. She shoved the rest aside, leaving them to scatter on the floor.

She brought the pencil down against the page and began to scrawl. Red, red, red, all over the cloak of the masked figure in the picture. She wasn't defacing the sheet. She kept within the lines, turning the cloak crimson.

She stopped at last, panting with effort and fear, and shoved the picture aside towards a distressed Corino. Her eyes fixed once more on Will. She raised a broken, toothless smile and reached out as if to touch his face. She spoke, with clarity and utmost tenderness.

Then she slumped back in her chair and folded in on herself like a dry leaf. She clamped both hands over her mouth.

Will knew there would be nothing more forthcoming from the poor wretch. She whimpered and shook her head at all further questions. They took her away.

"Well, that was a futile endeavour," Corino announced once the door had shut, gathering his scattered pencils from the floor with shaking hands. Coggiola, who'd been standing by the window radiating annoyance, shot him a furious look.

"What did she say to me?" Will asked of the young man.

"Oh, I—" the police artist cast another nervous look at his boss. "It was just nonsense, signore. Ramblings of a disturbed mind."

"Tell me, please."  
  
Corino grinned awkwardly. "She said you have a fever. In your heart. And that you will burn." All Will could think of was the previous evening and his fingers against Count Lecter's note.

\----

No new details had been gleaned from the woman's words. They left the asylum with nothing more than a page of defaced police evidence. In the gondola, Will asked to look through Corino's papers. He gazed again at the sketch of the masked figure, swimming now in red. Unlike his companions, he didn't think the woman's scribbles without meaning. He remembered again the drawing of the first murder, the one done in a finer hand.

"Signor Corino, it wasn't you who sketched the gondola murder three years ago, was it?"

"You have a keen eye, Mr Graham," Coggiola interjected. "That drawing wasn't done by our young man here. We were between artists then."

"Then who was it by?"

"It so happens we already mentioned his name this morning. As he was assisting Doctors Cella and Prezza at the time, we asked Count Lecter to draw the picture. I was loathe to employ a gentleman for such a gruesome task but, as a surgeon, he's no stranger to death. He's also an accomplished draftsman and, as I recall, he agreed readily."

Yesterday in the police chief's office Will had felt dread like an insidiously rising flood. It rose higher now, cold and paralysing, and Will couldn't say why.

\----

Friday evening came, along with a familiar apprehension against crowds and parties. Will ran a comb through his hair and put on his best dinner suit: black, showing its age. He would cut an absurd, funereal figure amongst the decked-out revellers. He glanced at the faded camellia next to his bed and, for a mad moment, thought of pinning it to his lapel, like a secret message.

Snow began falling anew as he set off into the Venetian night, the invitation tucked into his coat and Pierrot's white face cradled in his hands. He was brought into a crush of gondolas on the Grand Canal, all of them attempting to reach a lit-up palazzo as splendid as Count Lecter's. One by one, the boats' passengers poured out onto the narrow dock, trailing a kaleidoscope of rich fabrics through the snow to the duchess' door.

Will made it onto dry land at last and made his way inside. He surrendered his hat and coat and immediately felt lost.

The laughter and chatter of arriving parties echoed to the soaring ceilings of the grand foyer. Music poured from the rooms upstairs, down a mammoth marble staircase. Masked faces were everywhere, but Will had left his own face uncovered. How would the count know him otherwise? But then: how would he know the count?

He soon had his answer. Will knew him at once by that peculiar cautious grace with which he carried himself.

Guest after guest glided past him to reach the festivities upstairs, but Will stood fixed to the spot, unable to keep himself from staring at the figure descending the staircase. 

Count Lecter's face was bare. He wore short trousers and stockings of the last century and a long coat that shimmered with swirls of blue and gold thread, like sunshine on water — like scales. His waistcoat was a venous red, same as the suit he had worn when the two of them first met.

There was a woman on his arm. She was draped in a dazzling gown of flowing gold fabric trimmed at the neckline with a wreath of black leather roses, to match the black leather of her half-mask. For a moment Will feared he was about to be introduced to a replacement for the cast-off American blonde.

The two of them reached the foyer and moved directly for Will, who was soon divested of his fear.

"I'm told you are Will Graham," the woman said, her painted red lips spreading into a dazzling smile. "Welcome to Venice and to my home, signore."

Will bowed over the duchess' extended hand. He struggled to keep his eyes from the count. "Good evening, Duchess Komeda. Count Lecter."

"We're delighted to have you. I understand Count Lecter has already told you that Comandante Generale Coggiola will be in attendance this evening?"

"He has, yes."

"I must therefore warn you that I will do everything in my power to make sure you two don't speak a word about any matters related to crime. Tonight is about mischief of a different kind: music, games and champagne."

Despite the charm and dazzle of his companion, the count's eyes were on Will. "Duchess Komeda is an avowed humanitarian," he said. "If she were able, she would make the skies rain champagne and thus drown the sorrows of every man."

"Oh Hannibal," she laughed and leaned into the count's arm. Will wanted that name in his own mouth. "Alas, as it stands, the skies refuse to stop snowing and making my guests' journey here difficult. But I see the comandante has just arrived. Will you both excuse me?"

Count Lecter bowed and stepped aside smoothly to let her pass. Then he moved closer, as if to shield Will from Coggiola's sight with the line of body. Will felt his face heat and clutched his mask tighter.

"If our hostess is to keep her promise, then I must act as her assistant and rescue you tonight from the reach of the law."

Will breathed a laugh. "I dare say you have now officially made a habit of coming to my rescue."

"Do you object to being rescued?"

"Not usually. But I doubt your ability to hide us from the chief of police in a moderately sized palazzo."

"You have your disguise. That's a start."

"You don't have yours."

"True. But how could you have found me tonight if I'd worn a mask? Besides, not all disguises are physical."

New arrivals were still streaming past them. Will felt they had formed their own little island in a sea of costumed humanity. "My disguise came with a name, as you recall. Does yours?"

"It does. And if we are equals, then I think you can already guess what it is."

Will couldn't quite meet the count's eyes. His face was still hot, and he felt the faint muscle strain of a lingering smile.

"Good evening, Hannibal," he said softly.

The count — Hannibal — gave him a small bow.

"Good evening, Will."

They ascended the stairs together, towards the music.


	8. Leviatano Veneziano

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Parts of this chapter refer to scenes in Chapter 1. If you don't remember what happened at Will's lecture, might be worth a re-read?

_"Do I alone hear this melody,_  
_which wonderfully and softly, lamenting delight,_  
_telling it all, mildly reconciling  
_ _sounds out of him?"_

\- Liebestod, Tristan und Isolde

 

The first salon swept them up in a wave of festive bustle. Within minutes Will's head was spinning with sound and scent and commotion. Small platforms had been set about the room for fire eaters and jugglers; for clowns and risqué poets; for teetering human pyramids assembled from scantily clad acrobats. To Will's left, a Chinese contortionist was proving popular with a group of masked ladies, who shrieked and gasped their approval and delight. Servants disguised as grinning devils manoeuvred themselves precariously through the crush of costumed humanity, supplying au d'oeuvres and drink. Somewhere in a far corner a lively but insipid tarantella was issuing from a small band of musicians.

The count summoned a waiter and collected from him two coupes of champagne. He offered one to Will, who stared distractedly after the youth. The devil-masked man's bare torso had been grease-painted red and all Will could see was the flayed wretch inside the church of San Zaccaria. Was that the colour the Leviathan had left him in? Is that how the skinned muscle glistened in the pale morning light pouring in through the stained glass windows?

"All of this can be overwhelming at first," Hannibal whispered in his ear, then nodded to the champagne glass. "But rest assured Messieurs Moët and Chandon are here to help."

Will forced his mind back into the present moment. "Do you suppose if I offer to sell him my soul, that devil would bring me some whiskey?" he asked, but still downed his drink in two gulps and found his hand shaking about the glass.

Hannibal gave him an amused glance, then led them deeper into the maze of humanity.

Will anchored his spinning head to some sense of reality by keeping his eyes on the count, who steered them expertly through the room. Hannibal needed no mask: his face was a calm and smooth sea, its beautiful bones benign and inscrutable to all that beheld them. He bowed and exchanged greetings with every other person they passed, and all acknowledged him warmly in return. Will, nodding his head wearily through a flurry of introductions, thought of Coggiola's remark: _a solid and respected man_.

"You recognise all these people, even in disguise?" he asked. 

"Few of them truly want to hide their identity. It would mean foregoing their rightful place in society," Hannibal said. "The masquerade is merely another way for them to display the ostentation of their station. In that sense, you and I are being more true to the spirit of Carnevale. Countess Potocka," the count bowed to a plump, cat-masked woman in peacock blue.

"Count Lecter," the woman blushed and hid behind her fan, having been caught with her mouth full. "Please excuse me, but you have truly outdone yourself with the recipes this year."

The count gave her a gracious nod.  
  
"Your— recipes?" Will said when they moved on.

"My passion for the culinary arts is a natural extension of my love of anatomy," Hannibal said. "Since I've developed something of a reputation for it, I help the duchess devise her menus for the ball. "

That at least explained the absurdly delicious dinner Will had been treated to at Palazzo Lecter. Had the count prepared that meal himself? At nearest opportunity, Will snatched a small meat pastry from a passing tray and had to close his eyes as the buttery spiced morsel dissolved in his mouth.

They were progressing through the salon and the guests were growing noisier, as was the offensive tarantella. Will peered over the heads of the gathered guests, to the wildly waving conductor. He recognised the man: Marino, the rude composer he had collided with outside the pastry shop. He turned a knowing grimace at the count.

"I had warned you, had I not?" Hannibal murmured discreetly, looking pleased at Will's obvious distaste for the music.

"I hope you've noticed by now that all of this is a form of torture for me," Will said, "and that I'm still wondering why on earth you thought it right to invite me. This pageantry is lost on me, Hannibal." The name still felt strange in Will's mouth, but he wanted it, like a prize or a secret. Like he'd wanted the mask he now held in his hand.

"If I'm to be your rescuer, I must first orchestrate some means to distress you," the count replied. "This particular torture is over. Come. We are escaping now, towards real music and my reason for summoning you here."

\----

They passed through another foyer into a gilded ballroom. Thousands of candles burned in twisting sconces along the walls, stretched to infinity by soaring mirrors. A full orchestra had been installed at the far end of the floor. The waltz came to a stop as the two of them entered, and so did the colourful couples whirling about to its notes. A hush began to fall over the gathered guests, and Will soon saw that it was at the behest of the conductor.

"Let us get closer," the count said softly. They got as close to the orchestra as the crowd would permit.

Once silence fell, a woman ascended the stage without introduction — it seemed she needed none. Red silk coiled about her body and trailed behind her like a river of blood. Her hair and half her face were entirely disguised by a headdress made of flowers: anemones, dahlias, orchids. And camellias. It was as if the Leviathan had opened the woman's skull and planted a garden inside — that is what Will thought, and loathed himself for it.

"Lenora," Hannibal whispered in Will's ear. "It's a feat for the Duchess to steal her for the night from the talons of La Scala."

Lenora began. Note for note, the violins and oboes followed faithfully the song that flowed from the crimson mouth beneath the flowers. It was a strangely dizzied melody that opened wider and wider, like a river of love and grief pouring into an endless and luminous ocean.

Will's heart began to ache. All he longed for in that moment was to look to his companion and see the invisible mask he'd worn all evening finally fallen away. He did not dare. He looked down at his own mask instead, turned up in his hands like a beggar's bowl.

A white petal drifted lazily down and settled inside it.

"What..." Will mouthed to himself, and looked up.

Crimson and white, pink and bruise violet, thousands of petals were languidly pouring down from above. Nets had been strung all along the ceiling and now, while Lenora's voice soared, invisible hands had loosened a soft snow of blossoms over the gathered masquerade. Will watched them catch in the flames from the chandeliers and singe to an ash that mixed with the strange downpour and fell into reaching hands and onto upturned masked faces. And all the while, try as it might, Will's heart couldn't separate all this bewildering beauty from the Leviathan's displays.

More curious guests were pushing into the ballroom, pressing up behind Will or trying to shove past to get closer to Lenora's mournful ecstasy. Will peered about — Hannibal had vanished from his side, separated from him by the swell of new arrivals.

"Hannibal," he whispered, looking about desperately.

His head spun and his vision swam. He swayed. If he stayed in this crowd, alone, he'd suffocate. The music, the snow of ash and flowers falling on blank and grotesque faces, all of it would swallow him whole. A hand caught his arm. Hannibal.

"You look as pale as your Pierrot," the count murmured over the music. "Step outside with me, Will. Please."

Will nodded helplessly and let himself be led out of the crush.

They emerged into a long corridor that ran along the ballroom and Will caught his breath. There, the lights were much dimmer, the music muted but still affecting. They walked slowly along, passing a few amorous couples carrying on inside the corridor's dimly lit alcoves. Will averted his eyes.

The count beckoned Will to rest on the bench in the furthermost alcove, near balcony doors which he opened to let in some air. He settled beside him and, having peeled off a glove, raised a hand to his forehead. Will leaned into the touch, cool and dry against his own damp skin, but the hand fell away.

"Your fever may be returning. All of this has only put a further strain on you and I must take the blame."

"Please, you mustn't. I did hope that tonight would allow me some reprieve from the case. But—" He watched Hannibal swallow while he waited for Will to continue. Will could only shake his head.

"It was foolish of me to invite you, knowing that the police chief would be here," the count said. "How could I hope to steal you away from the horrors of your work when I knew the man who involved you in it was also in attendance?"

Will shook his head again and cradled the mask closer in his lap. Some petals had remained inside it, crimson and white. "This has nothing to do with Coggiola. It's the Leviathan himself. I feel close to him here, more than I have anywhere else. He may be here. He must be. He thrives amongst all this stifling... beauty."

"And do you wish to tell this to the comandante?”

"No. I've told Coggiola enough. He must already think me unhinged. I'm sure of it. And if he knew about all the other things I see and feel, he would soon find me a cell on San Servolo."

"Would it unburden you to confess these things?"

“And lose your— confidence as well?" Will wanted to say friendship, but the word stuck in his throat.

The count peeled out of his other glove. His fingers fell gently on the mask in Will's lap. Will let himself look up and take him in: the sharp and still beauty of his face, the gold and blue patterns on his coat swimming like algae in the candlelight. Will wanted to press his cheek against the fabric. He wanted to know if he'd find it as cool as the skin of the sea-stag that swam through the murk of his dreams.

"Yet you don’t deny that a confession would bring you relief. Wear the mask, Will, and you can blame Pierrot for whatever you say next." Hannibal took the mask from Will's hands. "Will you permit me, as you had before?"

Will took a deep breath and nodded.

Hannibal shifted closer. The petals spilled into their laps as the mask was lifted over Will's face. Through the wall, Lenora's voice faded to silence and a roar of applause rose and fell.

"Shall I fasten it?"  
  
"No. Please, just— just hold it whilst I speak."

Will had to catch his breath again, overwhelmed by their closeness and his own fear. After a moment, he let himself speak through the mask.

"What I cannot tell Coggiola is that I wish I had seen the Leviathan's work in all its— in all its splendour. Yes, splendour. The true colours and shapes of his design. I would understand him better. I would feel him. All those police photographs and sketches are like postcards of Venice. Until one arrives here, one cannot comprehend its beauty and ruin. One cannot comprehend—" he paused for breath— "that the two are inseparable. Just as you'd said."

Hannibal's thumbs slid against the mask, caressing. "And there is something else," he said, very softly.

"Yes, the worst of it. I know that if I catch the murderer now I will never see his work in the— flesh."

"And you are ashamed of the regret that comes with this thought."

Will couldn't bear to give voice to the answer. But it was the truth. He nodded.

"The papers say there was a woman who witnessed the Leviathan's work firsthand and driven mad. Do you fear the same for yourself?"

"No. Quite the opposite. I fear he would not drive me mad. Isn't that more terrible?" Will reached for the mask and his fingers brushed the count's. "You were there. You drew the first body. What did you see?"

He watched Hannibal's eyes move over him, careful as they had been on the drizzly promenade with the island of the dead behind them.

"I dare say I did not see as much as you would have seen," Hannibal said slowly. His hands moved from under Will's to the edges of the mask, to trace the skin there. "Will, you say that he is here. Your monster. Can you say why?"

"I feel the same now as I did when I first laid eyes on his work. Only more so."

"How do you feel?" That voice was so close now, so low and intimate. The fingertips skimmed the edge between porcelain and skin.

"Like I'm both drowning and being seduced."

Hannibal's hands slipped from Will's face and onto his shoulders, and Will had to catch the mask as it fell. The count's own face was unchanged — a perfect blank sea. Will did not dare to guess what his own might show, now that those hands were on him, holding him.

"Do you feel you are closer to understanding who or what he's been calling out to?"

"Now you will truly think I'm mad." Will shut his eyes against the sudden sting of tears. Without the mask, he felt stripped raw, like the man in San Zaccaria. "You see, I believe he's been calling out to me."

A silence followed. Relief did swell in Will's chest, followed by dread at what Hannibal would do or say now. Will half-expected him to rise, make some excuse and get as far away from Will as possible. Nothing of the sort happened. The hands stayed on Will's shoulders and squeezed.

"And now you feel as if you've said too much," Hannibal said.

Will nodded his head once, hard. His eyes still stung. He kept them shut.

"And that you must leave and escape the consequences of your words."

Again, Will nodded. He did wish to be left alone. It was what he deserved.

"Would it comfort you to know that my view of you hasn't been corrupted? That, if anything, I wish to know you all the more? And that I won't let you go until you agree to see me again?"

Will looked up at him. The calm mask had dissolved from Hannibal's face and all Will could see was a pure reflection of his own desires.

\-----

He was let go with the promise of a dinner, just the two of them, two nights hence. By the time he escaped with his coat and hat and reached the dock of the palazzo, his heart had almost stopped leaping about in his chest.

Moments after he set off, he was asking the gondolier to let him off again.

He wanted to walk, to get lost in the still, snow-covered night until Lenora's aching melody no longer echoed about his heart and the ash and petals stopped falling behind his eyelids. But alone, without the cool calm of the count's presence at his side, Will found the heated chaos of his mind refusing to settle. The memory of touch imprinted itself on his cheeks and shoulders.

He turned off the salizzada, following the signs for Ponte de Rialto, and into a deserted calle beside a narrow canal. His snow-muffled footsteps raised a faint echo along the crumbling walls. Or did they? No. They were matched, beat by beat, by someone else's.

Will stopped. The other set of feet stopped too.

"Signor Graham."

Will recognised the voice, just barely. It was nasal. Somehow sour. He turned.

"Yes?"

The owner of the voice stepped into the light of the lantern above them and Will recognised him: the heckler from the lecture. The same sour face, to go with the voice. What had been his name?

"Oh. Signor—"  
  
"Scarpa, I am Scarpa," the heckler said. There was stale wine on his breath.

"Right, yes. What can I do for you, Signor Scarpa?" Will said slowly.

The man's face looked strained and sickly in the yellow light. Snow lay heaped on the rim of his hat, as if he'd been walking for hours. He was wearing a huge black overcoat that swallowed up his hands. They twitched inside the pockets.

"So. You have decided to stay," the man said and nodded, bizarrely, towards the mask Will held in his hand.

Will felt the first nauseating wave of unease. He'd been followed — he was sure of it. He made an attempt at deflection.

"Where are you headed this evening, Signor Scarpa? In this weather?"

"Me? Oh, I— I was hoping to speak to you, as a matter of fact."

Will's mind ran through the possibilities now open to him. He could run, but he wouldn't get far on the icy pavements. But perhaps neither would his unsolicited companion. In any case, Will felt certain he would be pursued.

Scarpa's shoulder jerked, snapping one hand out of his pocket. Will flinched and put his own hand out, defensively. What appeared before him was not what he'd expected.

The silver figure of the crucifix glinted in the low light.

"Will you kiss it?" the man asked.

Will stared at the cross held out between them. Despite himself, he breathed out an incredulous laugh that steamed in the icy air.

"You— you want me to kiss the cross."

"Will you?" Something like desperation coloured the man's voice. "For the sake of your soul, will you?"  
  
Will reached out a shaking hand and let it fall gently over Scarpa's, over the strange offering.

"Signor Scarpa. Is there somewhere I can take you? A warm osteria for a drink, perhaps? You seem unwell.”

Scarpa shook his head and yanked his hand back. "Unwell? I am beyond well. But you! I had hoped you'd repent. Oh, how I'd hoped," he whined mournfully. The cross tumbled from his hand and wedged into a pile of swept-up snow.

Will took a step back. A note of fear sang through his heart.

Scarpa reached back into his coat.  
  
"God forgive me," he said, and drew a knife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- The flower-masked Lenora is singing "Liebestod". A bit cheesy and predictable, I know, but it's soooo perfect. Also, Wagner wrote Tristan und Isolde in Venice, so.
> 
> \- Yes, I did debate whether the Duchess would serve champagne or the Venice- native Prosecco at the ball. I went with champagne, because it was likely more expensive and suited to her international guests. Yes, I think about these things.


	9. The Sinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: knife violence

The mask slipped from Will's grasp. He sidestepped Scarpa's lunge and grabbed for the wrist of the knife-wielding hand — and caught it. Then the other wrist, to stop the fist which flung itself at his face. He threw his body weight forward and held firm while Scarpa squirmed and strained in his grip like a caught fish. His sour face was twisted in anguish.

"You don't have to do this," Will said, trying to force calm into his voice through the onslaught of fear. The knife thrashed about in Scarpa's hand, glinting in Will's periphery.

"You must repent, you must," Scarpa spat out through bad teeth, then threw himself forward with renewed strength, skidding on icy ground and sending them both tumbling into a pile of snow. The side of Will's face smashed against a paving stone and hideous pain shot through his leg — an ankle had twisted beneath him.

But he still had Scarpa’s wrists. He held them both, bruise-tight and at bay. Scarpa was above him, grunting and flailing and swinging the knife like a pendulum of chaos. Will, too, flailed. He kicked up with his good leg and got a howl out of the man when his knee connected hard with some soft nervy patch of flesh. Scarpa's legs jerked back and Will saw the pale mournful face of the Pierrot shoved into the black water of the canal.

The canal — it was so close. Will could try and flip them over, to hurl Scarpa into the water but no — he wanted that knife. He would take it and own it and make this bastard bleed—

Something moved nearby. Soft footsteps, close enough to distract him, if only for a moment. Will looked away from the knife, into the shadows. Scarpa took his chance.

Pain tore through Will's right shoulder, cold and bitter like a shard of ice. He turned his head, slowly as if in a dream. Scarpa was straddling him, panting, eyes bulging and animal-wild. Will peered down at himself. The blade of the knife sat lodged halfway in his coat. Underneath it, his skin was warm and wet. He smelled copper. He felt sick.

He threw his arm up at Scarpa's throat. Scarpa grabbed for the handle of the knife.

But still there was something there, in the dark. Another rustle, just beyond the light of the lantern. Hobbs? Was it Hobbs, back again to grin and taunt?

No — whatever it was, Scarpa heard it too. He held onto the knife whilst he turned.  
  
"Chi è la?"  
  
A figure moved out of the shadows and into the light. Will heard a strangled gasp — his own. "Oh God."

It was only a flashing glimpse, but so clear that it seared itself onto Will's mind and soul: a cloak the colour of night and blood; a bone white mask. Then something swung at the light above, the glass of the lantern shattered with an almighty shriek, and all was pitch black.

Will felt Scarpa shoot up from his lap. He was free. Blindly, he scurried back towards the wall, away from his assailant and away from the canal. He groped along the way for the cast-off crucifix, for anything he could use as a weapon. Broken glass cut through his gloves and into his palms. He couldn't find a piece big enough to use.

For a moment, everything was far too still – only Scarpa somewhere nearby, huffing and swearing at the dark. Will could hear the rising panic in his voice.

Then commotion. A struggle and a scream. Something being hurled like a heavy sack to the ground, near Will's feet, then being dragged away again. A hideous choked sound, then scrabbling and footsteps, someone fleeing, disappearing down the dark calle. But who?

Then silence once more.

Will tried to get himself up but the pain in his ankle howled and betrayed him. He groaned. Someone heard him and shifted in the darkness. Someone was approaching, looming above Will, a presence as dense as tar.

The icy air in Will's lungs escaped him in quick puffs, as if he could breathe his way out of terror. "It's you, isn't it?"

No answer. Will groped outward with his uninjured arm, into nothingness. He smelled and tasted blood. Somewhere very close, just in front of him, he heard a breath: slightly quickened, but untouched by fear. He reached for it with his hand.

And that was when he found it: a shape, undulating and smooth, and cold even through Will's glove. Will traced it. He laughed, deliriously. "Oh, there is truth in masks," he said to the darkness.

The silent figure shifted closer in reply. A hand groped about Will, then stopped. With a single smooth tug, the knife was pulled from his shoulder. Will's entire body spasmed and he let out an agonising cry.

He reeled from the pain. He felt so cold. He shut his eyes in the dark and waited for the knife to return. Seconds went by.

"Well?" he gasped. "Have you come for me? To butcher me, then pin me up? Do it. At least I'll know how you turn them into art."

The knife never came. Somewhere ahead, he heard a splash — something else disappearing into the black water, to join Pierrot.

What came instead was a touch, so gentle that Will flinched as if branded. A leather glove was cradling his cheek. Fingers were probing carefully about his bleeding brow. He tried to do something, to lash out, but strength was leaving him fast.

He let out a whimper. An ecstasy of pain and fear consumed him. "Please," he whispered. A moment ago, he thought he was asking for death. He knew now that he was asking for knowledge. He arched away from the wall, against the screaming in his shoulder, and towards the touch.  
  
“Please,” he asked again.

Something hard touched the tip of his nose — the edge of the mask. Warm air rushed against his face — a breath. Something soft brushed his lips.

He was being kissed.

A strangled noise escaped him. He should have pulled back. He couldn't. He was drowning in a cold sea of pain and the kiss cradled him in its warm net. Remember them, he tried to tell himself through the raging chaos in his head. You must know how to describe them. Those lips. They're wide and smooth and defined.

It was too late. Will was lost. He was kissing back, passionately, touching tongues with a monster.

It felt like forever — it was only a moment. Voices were coming from the salizada. Were they getting closer? All touch was severed in the dark. Will was left adrift in his icy sea.

"Please," he pleaded with the darkness. "I want to see you. To know you."  
  
He waited, but there was only silence. He was alone again.  
  
If he stayed where he was, the cold would claim him whole. He'd sleep and never wake up. With the aid of the wall, he hauled himself up and staggered forth, towards the light.  
  
\-----

His foot dragged. Blood was seeping from his shoulder. Blood had closed up his left eye. Through his right, he watched faces swim by as he limped from doorway to doorway along the main street. He didn't know where he was going. He mouthed for help, but all who passed gave him fearful glances. No one stopped.

"Mr Graham? Oh mon Dieu, Mr Graham!" He turned his battered face towards the woman's voice. It was the cat-masked French countess — Potocka, was it? — he had met at the ball. Her male companion stared at Will, aghast.

"Pierre, it is Mr Graham! He was at the duchess' with Count Lecter!" They were rushing towards him, the man catching Will as he crumpled to the ground again. "Dear sir, what on earth has happened to you?"

"Attacked," Will managed. Leviathan, he wanted to add, but what good would it do? How could he explain?

"Oh, those brutes! Back to the duchess', quickly." They were holding him up, getting him to his feet. "We're not far, Mr Graham. Walk with us— that's it. We're not far at all.'

\----

He made it as far as the gondola before his vision began to slip into short spells of blackness. Each time, he was back in the dark alley, drunk on fear and pain and on that strange soft mouth.

They rowed him fast towards help and safety and soon reached their destination. Supported by his rescuers, Will staggered onto land and to the grand entrance of the duchess’ palazzo.

Hurried explanations were made to the footmen, the doors were flung open. Will was brought into the foyer and lowered onto a bench. Moments later, the hostess herself appeared, emerging from a crowd of shocked, muttering onlookers. They had all gathered to behold the bleeding man amidst the pageantry.

Will peered up at Duchess Komeda’s face, unmasked and utterly shaken. He wanted to say something. He had to.

"I've brought violence into your home, duchess. Please excuse me." He tried for a smile, but it must have looked grotesque.

"Good God," she whispered, then turned to her servants. "Comandante Coggiola, at once. And where is Count Lecter?"

Will stirred on hearing that name. He scanned the sea of faces about him for the one dear and familiar. He longed for the inscrutable calm of that face, same as he longed for sleep. If he slept, maybe all of this would prove to be a dream: the snow of petals and ash; the cross, the knife, the kiss. He heard the footman’s offered answer.

"He has left, duchessa."  
  
"Are you certain? Surely not so early. Ah, comandante!"  
  
Coggiola's face appeared above Will, red with outrage. Will stared at him grimly with one eye. "Who, Mr Graham? Who did this?"  
  
"Scarpa. From the lecture. He had a knife. But—“  
  
The cloak, the mask, the shattered glass. Will had to find the words.  
  
"Him! That little wretch? Countess Potocka, where did you find Mr Graham? And was he alone?"

"Alone, signore. Along the Rio San Silverstro," the woman said, then stuttered. "He— he had broken glass in his hands. I drew it out in the gondola. Oh, it's so awful!" She began to weep. Will wanted to comfort her.

A footman appeared with a bowl of water. Will's gloves were removed and a warm towel was dabbed over his palms and brow. Someone else raised a glass to his lips: grappa or brandy. Meanwhile, Coggiola was spitting out orders to Duchess Komeda's messenger.

"A note to the station, and to Inspector Gatti. Men to search the streets around Campo San Silverstro and Jacopo Scarpa's known residence, tonight. Find that mad fiend and bring him to me.”

A fearful whisper was passing through the crowd. Through his daze, Will could just discern it: Leviatano, Leviatano.

He shook his head sharply. "No. No, that’s just it. It's not him. Commander, please listen to me. You must. There was someone else there. He looked—" Pain bowled him over and he slumped over his knees. His vision turned black again.

Coggiola rushed to his side. "Mr Graham, we shall speak once you’ve had medical assistance and no sooner, understand? Duchess, will you offer him a room for the night?"

Duchess Komeda nodded quickly. "But of course."  
  
"It's not Scarpa. It’s him. He's out there," Will muttered. "He's close."

The police chief frowned and raised a hand to Will's brow. Checking for fever — of course. "For God's sake. Have we sent for a doctor yet?"

"We had asked for Count Lecter, but I am told he's departed," the duchess said.

Will heard a movement in the gathered crowd. He shoved Coggiola's hand aside and looked up. The sea of masked faces parted, giving way to the unmasked face of Hannibal Lecter. Will wanted to weep with relief.

\----

"The laudanum first. Then we can see about your wounds." Will swallowed down the contents of the spoon being raised to his lips. The tincture was bitter, but sweetened with honey.

"And one more. There. Very good. Give it a few moments. The poppies will soon work their magic."

They were alone. Servants had brought in supplies, then quickly left. Hannibal had insisted no one accompany them into the guest room. "Calm is essential after his ordeal," he had told the shaken duchess. Coggiola departed to oversee the search.

Meanwhile Will had made a discorporate copy of himself. He floated somewhere in the room, watching whilst Hannibal carefully divested him of his bloody coat, jacket and shirt. Will's ankle was checked for broken bones. He was sat on the edge of the bed, the count beside him. Logs crackled on the fire. The room was warm, but Will watched himself shiver. His teeth chattered.

Through the daze, he felt a creeping despondency. There was nothing he could have done. All he had was a lost opportunity for knowledge — and the memory of a kiss that pierced him with a guilt far worse than Scarpa's knife.

At least the Leviathan wouldn't kill tonight. Too many police on the streets and on the canals? No, that wasn't why. Something else made Will certain that the night would pass without slaughter. He couldn't give his certainty shape.

Beside him, the count was too quiet. He seemed as tired as Will felt. Will wondered why.

The bleeding in his shoulder had stopped under some strong-scented coagulant compress. Hannibal removed it now and began to clean the wound. Will flinched.

"You are fortunate," the count said. "It appears your attacker didn't poison his blade. It's a common practice on the streets of Venice. I have seen the grim results on my operating table."

"That's why he pulled it out," Will said softly, half to himself.

Hannibal paused in bandaging Will's shoulder.

"Scarpa?"

Will shook his head. He averted his eyes from the count's. He watched his and Hannibal's reflections in the basin of water set before them, tinged red with Will's blood.

"Are you able to move your arm?" the count asked. Will could, just barely. "Good. I suspect the damage to the tendons is minimal. Another stroke of good fortune."

“What happened to the duchess' ball?”  
  
A cold compress was held up to his brow. “Dispersed early.” “I am sorry. I am to blame.”

“You burden yourself needlessly, Will. You’ve injected more excitement into the lives of the Venetian elite tonight than they could ever hope to gain from a masquerade.“

Will peered up again at the cold, serene planes of Hannibal's face. He remembered so well how they shifted after his confession.

"You didn't merely help the duchess with her menu tonight, did you? Lenora, the flowers — all that came from you."

A short silence followed. Will's palms were being examined by candlelight for any remaining slivers of glass.

"As astute as ever. Even under the influence of morphia," the count said.

The morphia had indeed begun to colour Will's blood. It felt so good to have Hannibal close. Will may have smiled.

"And you wanted to show me."

"I did." The reply was almost timid. "I do find it strange that this is what you should ask about, given that your life has just been threatened."

Will, too, found it strange. "The edges are blurring," he said quietly. "What were you thinking, I wonder, when Scarpa drew his knife?"

Will wished he could have answered with something halfway sensible: that he had hoped to escape with his life so that he might see home and his dogs again. That he thought of Abigail, or of the case brought to its conclusion. None of it would have been the truth. What he recalled thinking — firstly, fleetingly and absurdly — was that succumbing to Scarpa's knife would prevent him from attending his promised dinner with the count. And there was something else: another confession to add to the evening's burning pyre.

"I thought about killing him," Will said. “I wanted his knife.”  
  
"A natural desire, when one’s life is at stake."  
  
What natural desire had made Will return the kiss?  
  
"And what do you want now, Will?" the count asked.

Will was silent. Asking for more of what he wanted felt more dangerous than any blade. After a moment, what he wanted most came to him regardless. He was drawn into Hannibal's arms.

Something close to a sob shook itself loose in Will's chest. Every part of him ached, but his heart ached most of all, as it had whilst Lenora's song was soaring up into the downpour of flowers. A careful hand wrapped about the back of his head and brought it down to rest on Hannibal's shoulder. He buried his face in its curve and tried to breathe.

"This is wrong, isn't it?" he whispered.

"Us, like this?"

Hannibal's breath warmed the nape of his neck. The hand in Will’s hair slid down and smoothed down his back. Will saw himself again: half-naked and bloodied and held in Hannibal's arms.

"Just now, the world outside is very far away,” Hannibal said softly. “There is only this room, and us two, sitting in judgement of each other."

"Will you judge me for the mask? I have lost it. I am sorry."

A kiss smudged itself against his temple. "How could I, Will? How could it possibly matter, when I have you here with me, safe and whole?"

Another half-sobbed sigh escaped him. Feeling unfurled inside Will and carried him out onto a shimmering ocean of desperate love. He drew closer. He was received.

Hannibal's hand caressed down his back in a soothing rhythm. The aches were draining away from Will's body, siphoned away by Hannibal's touch and the bittersweet kiss of laudanum. He opened his unharmed eye. His vision was smearing the threads that twisted into strange patterns on Hannibal's coat, gold and blue. And red. There was red there, too, one tiny fleck of it. There, just inside the embroidered collar. Was he imagining it? Was he already dreaming?

"Is this my blood?" he murmured.

No answer. He felt himself being lowered onto the pillows of the bed. Hannibal's arms let him go so gently. A candle was extinguished nearby, then another. His world was dimming, and so he closed his eyes. It didn't matter. Hannibal was here, with him, so close.

"He kissed me," he heard himself say. "I kissed him. Forgive me."

A warm hand cradled his cheek and checked his wounded brow. Then fingertips, just skimming over his lips. He may have kissed them as they passed. Or was he really dreaming? He was so relieved. His skin was touching Hannibal's skin, at last. No porcelain to come between them. No leather gloves. But that was—

He was so tired. So confused. He reached for Hannibal’s hand and held it against his chest. Hannibal's voice came to him, sure and low like the summons of a bell through the fog.

"Sleep now, Will. Your room has a view over the Grand Canal. Think of the sunrise you'll see tomorrow morning. Think of its beauty, and nothing else."

"Will you be here when I wake?"

Again: no answer.  
  
Will let it all go. He slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Countess Potocka mentioned in this and the previous chapter is a little tribute to [this lady](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delfina_Potocka).


	10. The Man from Florence

He awoke, or so it seemed, to the sound of creaking. It was coming from somewhere in the palazzo.

He opened his eyes. He was standing in the ballroom, deserted now but still lit by a thousand candles. Petals and ash lay heaped beneath his feet. A soft sound came from behind him. He turned and saw a finned tail, iridescent blue and gold, slithering out through the vaulted glass doors.

"Wait," he said after it. The sudden force of dream conviction told him that the stag-headed hippocamp would tell him where to find his drowned mask.

He followed. Petals turned to glass beneath his bare feet and so he bled, skidding in his own blood. At the end of the dark corridor where he'd sat with the count, he heard an enormous splash. He sped towards the balcony in pursuit, through its doors, and hurled himself over the edge without a sliver of fear.

The water took him. It should have been filthy and cold — it was temperate and soft. A light shone through its murk from somewhere far below. He sunk towards the light and was caught.

His arms wrapped around the smooth squamous bulk of a now-familiar shape. "Oh," he sighed and pressed himself whole against it. A red heart glowed in the sea-stag's translucent breast, suspended in a cradle of opaline bones.

They didn't drift or swim. They sunk slowly together, towards the light, and into a forest of ancient tree trunks that held up the churches and palazzos of Venice above. The forest creaked, burdened by beauty.

He was naked. And so safe. He wrapped his limbs tightly about scale-armoured muscles and felt them pulse against his skin. Ripples of pleasure oscillated through him. He nuzzled closer, reached up to grasp the pale mossy antlers. The tail, fine as silk lace, flicked itself between his legs and caressed him from behind.

"More," he begged.

The beast tipped and twirled in the water. He clung on and rode it without restraint or shame. The water dance slid him against the warm scaly shape, rubbed him sweetly where it felt best. He moaned. Something was tasting him, suckling him, a tongue soft as seaweed. The light from below grew brighter, blinding. The stag coiled about him and squeezed. Something was slithering into him, a cunning limb seeking out a secret place inside him. He guided it with his body. "There," he gasped. "Touch me there." It licked and stroked him from within until it ripped his pleasure from him in spasms and shudders and cries that shook the mute and still waters.

They drifted together afterwards, weaving through the luminous dead forest that held up the city.  

"What happens now?" he asked of the stag's great beating heart. "Must I drown?"

"For the sake of our souls,” Hannibal's voice answered, “we both must."  
  
\----

Will was gazing out the windows, past the heads of the two men sat before him. A mist had spread itself over the Grand Canal and over the snowy domes and rooftops of the buildings that flanked it. The world outside was soft and smeared, as in the strange painting he had seen in Count Lecter's palazzo.

His breakfast sat untouched before him. He'd woken up alone, to sharp pain and the sordid mess of a dream-induced emission. He'd sought out a note or a letter before he sought out laudanum, but found none. The sunrise had been beautiful, just as Hannibal had promised. Will ached, everywhere, desperately.

Inspector Gatti spoke first, in a tone that verged on triumphant.

"Well, signore. It seems you may have helped us find our man after all — although not in the way we had expected."

Will turned to him slowly. "But you haven't found him."

Gatti looked to Coggiola and shifted in his seat. "Well— no. But the hunt is on. Venice isn't a big city, and our men are out in great numbers. We will find Scarpa, rest assured."

"You might," Will said. "But you won't find the Leviathan." His voice sounded cracked and dry.

He looked at Coggiola. The police chief sat beside his man, cross-armed, furrow-browed and silent. The silence troubled Will.

Gatti leaned forward in his chair. "Jacopo Scarpa's residence was searched. In it, we found every pamphlet and newspaper which ever printed anything about the Leviathan murders. And plenty about you, too, signore — the man harboured an obsession. We've scanned through his diaries. He believed your gifts of intuition made you a conduit to some kind of great evil. We always suspected the carnival murderer may have been issuing punishments to people he perceived as wicked—"

"And in that you have always been spectacularly wrong," Will interrupted. "The attempt on my life was a crude attack launched by an unhinged, careless man. The man you seek is beyond cautious. He demands— a calculated elegance in his work."

Who was he describing with those words? Who moved with cautious elegance between beauty and ruin? Will's heart hurt more than any struck or stabbed part of him. He wished the plague of intuition and dread he'd woken up with could be cut out of him like a diseased organ. He recalled his words through the morphia haze: Is this my blood?

"Besides, as I said," he added quietly, staring down at the red lines marking his palms, "there was someone else in that alley last night. I believe the man who came to my aid was your killer."

"Yet you admit you hardly saw him," Gatti said. "Had it not occurred to you, signore, that a good Samaritan came to your aid, not a fiendish murderer? If it was the Leviathan, why were you and Scarpa spared?"

And that was the most terrible thing of all. Will tried, but could not bring himself to speak about the kiss. Why Scarpa was let go, or who the Leviathan was stalking first, Will did not know. 

"I have told you: the man looked like the description given to us by the witness."

"A cloaked, masked figure during Carnevale."

Will felt his face twist. He heard his words falling flat against Gatti's firm conviction. "He— he saved me."

"An artist as well as a saviour! Well—" Gatti tapped the table between them with one finger— "as it happens, Scarpa is a jeweller. Close enough to your theory, Signor Graham? His shop even produced several reliquaries for the church of San Zaccaria. And he knew the Zattis."

Will stared past him and Coggiola again. "He may be eating his victims' flesh as well," he said wearily. "I'm not certain."

Gatti groaned and threw his arms up in exasperation. "This is absurd. Comandante?"

Coggiola didn't look at him.

"Early this morning I spoke to Count Lecter," he said, directly to Will.

Will's heart thudded in his chest. "Why?"

"Scarpa had approached him and several others after your lecture."

Will was trying to breathe. "What did they speak about?"

"Apparently Scarpa was very agitated by your presence in Venice. He probed Count Lecter and several others on whether they knew how long you were staying, and where."

"Did Count Lecter come to you with this, or did you come to him?"

Coggiola reached across the table, towards Will.

"Mr Graham," he said gravely, "we are all very concerned about you."

Will closed his eyes. Under his eyelids, colours were smearing, like the colours in a painting— that painting. "What else did Count Lecter say?" he asked quietly.

"The count fears for your health. He fears you may have seen things last night which weren't there."

Will wanted to get out of his chair, and out of the room. He felt ill. He tried to swallow down the rising bile of betrayal.

"He came to you in order to convince you to remove me from the case."

"So that you would be well again, Mr Graham."

Will shook his head hard until his wounded shoulder screamed. "So that you will satisfy yourself with the theories of this— " he waved his good arm at the indignant inspector— "Gatti here. Scarpa isn't your murderer. And I believe you know this, commander."

Coggiola was silent again.

"At least tell me," Will asked, "have you had any news about men reported missing in Florence?"

"We have indeed found a man who's not been heard from for nearly three years now. His description superficially matches the Leviathan's unknown first victim."

"Photographs?"

"Not yet. But—" Coggiola hesitated for a moment. "It seems your instincts were correct. The man lost in Florence was a young American painter. Not reported missing for some time, as he'd been hiding from debt collectors. That is why we failed to find his record three years ago. Are you all right, Mr Graham? You look pale."

Will was staring again at his misty view of Venice. He felt as tired as he had last night. Was that how shock manifested itself?

"I'd like to be alone now, please."

The two men looked to each other. After a moment, they rose, but lingered.

Coggiola broke the heavy silence that filled the room. "I regret to tell you this, signore, but whilst we look for Jacopo Scarpa, you are not safe. I have spoken with Duchess Komeda, and she has kindly allowed you to remain here, in the comfort of her home, until you depart from Venice."

"Until I depart," Will whispered to himself. Then looked to the police chief. "How many days left in the carnival, commander?"

"Five."

"You will have another body," Will said, and knew with a sickening certitude that it would be because of him.

Coggiola frowned. "Promise me you will stay safe, Mr Graham. At least do not leave the palazzo after dark."

Will gave him a broken smile.

"Oh, but I must. I am to have dinner with Count Lecter."

\----

Will's belongings arrived from the hotel that evening. There were letters, too: one from Dr Bloom and one from Abigail. He didn't open them.

Inside the empty black box which had held the mask he found the painting he'd been gifted by the woman from the lecture. Underneath it were the withered remains of a red camellia.

He lifted out the flower with tender and cautious fingers. He turned and limped over to the windows. He opened one to let in a damp, icy breeze.

He kissed the dead petals, then crushed them inside his wounded palm. He let them scatter into darkness, over the water, where his dreams lay drowning.

He'd been made bankrupt and was pleased to receive my patronage, the count had said to him. A painter from Florence. A destitute American whom no one would miss. Florence, where Count Hannibal Lecter had lived years prior.  

Will could look for hope in questions. How much of his reality was an illusion, beyond the visits from the dead grinning Hobbs? Had guilt over his feelings and desires driven him into mad suspicion?

He walked back to the bed and picked up the painting. He stared at the saintly rendition of his supposed better self, the self that slew monsters.

If Will prayed to saints, he would have prayed for doubt.


	11. Liebestod

_"Will he make many supplications unto thee?_  
_Will he speak soft words unto thee?_  
_Will he make a covenant with thee?_  
_Wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?"_

\- Job 41:3-4

 

The day he was to have dinner with Count Lecter, Will was seen by the duchess' personal physician. The man changed the dressing on his shoulder and insisted on bandaging his cut-up hands. He touched Will, far too much. Will didn't want to be touched by him, by none except one.

The man departed, Will having refused his help with the painful effort of getting dressed. He didn't yet know how he'd strap his shoe onto a foot that had swollen from his sprained ankle.

A soft knock came on his door sometime later. Duchess Komeda entered, preceded by a servant with a tray. She wore a dress of shimmering midnight blue, a stark complement to her pale complexion. Will would not have been surprised if the count's tastes informed her wardrobe choices as well.

"My physician tells me you refused laudanum,” she said. “Will you at least have some wine before you leave for the evening? Amarone, an excellent vintage."

Will smiled wanly. "Thank you, but no."

She sat down and assessed him for a moment. "Mr Graham, I cannot fathom why you would choose to keep your engagement when you are clearly in a great deal of pain and danger. Or why, for that matter, Hannibal is allowing you to keep it."

Will wasn't certain that he wanted an answer to the first query. "Please venture a guess as to the latter, duchess. You must know him well."

"Ever since he came to Venice,” she said. "It would not be boastful of me to say that, out of all his acquaintances, it is I who know him best. Yet the word I would most readily use to describe him is ‘unknowable’."

Will peered at his crimson reflection inside the proffered glass of wine. "He's never worn a mask to any of your balls, has he?"

"Never. He doesn't need one. He knows that masks betray much. He wears his own face as a disguise. Especially in friendship." She weighed the last word carefully. 

"Is he your friend, duchess?"

“In many ways we complement each other, as wine may complement a meal. But as for a deeper connection—" she made a vague gesture with her hand. Will thought she looked sad. "Well, as you can see, I cannot even answer my own question as to why he'd like to see you in your present state. That should tell you enough. You, on the other hand — I think you know the answer."

Will did. At least he thought he did. The now familiar ache washed over him, all through his wounds and through his heart.

He must have winced, because the duchess leaned in and took his bandaged hands gently in her own. She turned up his palms and sighed.

"Oh, how you suffer, Mr Graham," she said sadly. "And for what cause?"

\----

He was collected from the palazzo by the count's black vessel and its stone-faced gondolier. The duchess supplied him with shoes that accommodated his foot, and a walking cane for his limp. Will looked to the cane and wondered if he’d need it tonight for self-defence.

He was left with a kiss on the cheek and another sad glance, as if they were parting for good.

The gondola sailed out along the Grand Canal. Evening had arrived with a full bright moon and hung it in a pristine sky. Slabs of snow lingered on a few rooftops, mirrors to catch the silver light from above. Every shape and curve of Venice's crumbling beauty appeared sharp and defined through the acute lens of Will's pain. He still hadn't taken morphia. He wanted to take his pain and drag it across the doorstep of his host: a gift or an accusation to lay at Hannibal's feet.

Merry boats drifted past on the black water, filled with laughter and conversation. Meanwhile Will may as well have been crossing the Acheron. His eyes lingered on the gondola’s golden oarlock. He waited, half-hopeful, but the stag-headed creature remained motionless, an inanimate feature of non-retractable reality.

\----

"You've not taken anything for the pain," the count said as soon as Will was received. What had betrayed him? His gait, his expression? He felt the rise of a rueful smile.

"I'm told I am in danger. I thought it best to leave my senses unmarred." "Pain as the price of safety?"

"Of awareness," Will said, and met Hannibal's gaze. He was greeted with a mask of innocuousness and skin. The disguise was wholly in place.

They crossed slowly through the empty palazzo's cavernous entry hall towards the dining room, the count making concessions to Will's slow pace. The table, set for dinner and illuminated with candelabras, had been draped with a cloth of a familiar midnight red. It looked like an altar, ready for blood. And where was the sacrifice?

“Our meal will be some time yet,” the count said mildly.

Will was offered a whiskey and shown to an armchair by the fire. He gripped the armrests with his bandaged hands and lowered himself down stiffly. The pain was as good a tool as he had hoped: it kept him lucid, and distracted him from the dread of what was to come. The count settled opposite, cross-legged and still, sunk into the funereal opulence of his domain.

"I understand the search for your attacker continues." "They'll find him soon enough."

"The police must see him as an extraordinarily dangerous man if he is worthy of such a far- reaching manhunt. Do you feel yourself to be in danger?"

"Not from Scarpa,” Will said curtly. "Did you know him well?"

"Only from the lectures at the Istituto. A nervous type, devoted to God and easily frightened by new knowledge."

Will took a swig of his drink. "He’d certainly been frightened enough. Even before Coggiola began his hunt."

Hannibal inclined his head to the side, a small, insectile gesture. “By the man who intervened that night. The man you say you saw.”

“The man I say I saw," Will echoed quietly, into his glass. "My unfathomable saviour."

Hannibal watched him, shadows burrowing into the sockets of his eyes. “Unfathomable to others. But not to you.”

"No. I see him more clearly by the day."

"Tell me about him."  
  
Will rose from the chair and took halting steps towards the wall hung with paintings of Venice.

"A man of demanding aesthetic sensibilities. Meticulous and elegant. But always a stranger, wherever Fate casts him. La Serenissima must have been, to him, love at first sight. A sense of belonging at last, amongst the shipwreck of her beauty. And so he courts her. Compliments her ancient festivals with ever more inventive grotesques of bones and flesh. But cities can't love back. This canvas—" Will nodded to the smallest picture on the wall, its colours like the bruises on his face— “What happened to the man who painted it? The bankrupt American."

He heard movement. He turned. Hannibal had risen to stand behind him. The skin mask was unrelenting. Shadows spun by firelight shifted over its sharp bones.

"He’s ascended to higher echelons of his art," Hannibal said, and Will suppressed a shudder. “Will you continue?”

After a moment, once his breath had steadied, Will did.

"For a time, vanity allowed him to cultivate faith in art for art's sake. But truth caught up with him. All creation demands a connection, a reason to be. Even murder. The Leviathan pinned up his offerings like traps for understanding, and found no takers. Perhaps years ago there had been someone with potential. But she slipped away, frightened and incapable. Most saw only horror. A sideshow of death."

A step closer now. That elegant shape, silhouetted by the light from the fire, moving in to shade Will whole. 

"And what do you see?"

"I've seen death. It's so ordinary. Barely even horrific. He elevates it to art. He mocks its banality with beauty."

Closer still, close enough for Will to hear the tempo of Hannibal's breath and feel the weight of his shadow. He pressed himself between the frames of the paintings behind him. Something was beginning to tremble deep inside his bones and seep out onto his skin, something that demanded flight. He felt hemmed in. The wall was behind him. His cane was by the armchair. The door was very far away. He didn't know where to turn his eyes. He didn't want to look at the mask of Hannibal's face any longer.

"You cannot hand such poetry to the chief of police, Will. He will never accept it. He prefers prose."

Will felt his mouth twist. "And you're the one who put the prose in his mouth. Didn't you? Coggiola is a smart man, but you've inflicted your respectable opinions on him. You've made things seductively simple."

"You overestimate my influence."  
  
"Don't lie to me, Count Lecter. Did you tell him I was mad?"

In the shadows, the seam of Hannibal's lips moved and broke apart. "I told him what he needed to hear to ensure you were safe. You've been so unwell."

"Why did you ask to meet me when I first arrived? Did Jack Crawford tell Coggiola to appoint you as my minder? A chaperone to save me from myself?"

No answer. Only that gaze fixed on him from the shadows, inscrutable, thorough and bright. Will peeled himself from the wall and stepped to the side. His ankle protested with a howl of ache. He managed a few determined steps towards the door before he had to grip a dining chair for balance.

"Will—" Hannibal’s voice moved behind him, coming in pursuit.

Will panted through the pain. "The Leviathan ought to have killed me in that alley. Things would be simpler for everyone. Things would be— prosaic."

In an instant, his path to the door was blocked. Hannibal materialised before him, solid and immovable, closer than before. Will's elbow was clasped. His heart thudded wildly. He was back in the snowy calle, with the blood and the fear. He looked to the table, to the knives amidst the silverware.

'But he didn't kill you,” Hannibal said.

Will clutched at the back of the chair. "No."

"Instead he kissed you."

Will tried to focus on something, anything except Hannibal's face. "I don't know why," he whispered and shut his eyes, as if that were escape enough. "I can't understand it."

"Don't you know your monster by now? It's so simple, Will."

"Is it?"

"Yes. You must have looked beautiful."

From the tar pit of his fear, Will heard his own startled laugh. He shook his head. He was anything but, a human patchwork of nightmares and cursed intuition that belonged nowhere.

He pinched his eyelids tighter. A tremble ran again through the parts of him that ached. Those parts were still waiting for the blade to come, yet all he heard was their two breaths, lifting and falling like veils between them, one thin and fluttery, the other steady and slow.

Hannibal's voice came to him instead, a low murmur that weaved itself into the crackle of flames.

"Bloodied and hungry for blood. On the precipice between life and death. Beautiful—" Fingertips fell against Will's cheek. He gasped. "Just as when I first saw you."

The fingertips, cool and smooth, stroked up to his wounded brow and lingered there, pressing. Will let out a shuddering breath and leaned into the touch. “Show me?"

"My drawings of you?"

"Yes. You'd promised."

The touch fell away and Will's eyes flew open. Hannibal reached for the mantlepiece and the sketchbook there. He held it up, opened like a holy tome. Will saw himself in its pages: not the crude caricature of the painting he'd been given, but himself, just as he'd been the day of the lecture: a haunted, broken man lost in a crowd of voyeuristic strangers. It was as truthful a rendition as the sketch of the American artist who'd had his chest hollowed out and filled with the feast of life.

Hannibal's voice reached him again. Will peered up from the sketchbook and watched the words take shape on that soft, expressive mouth. ”Beautiful, as when I found you at the hospital, distressed. Even more so when I led you out of that ballroom."

"Always out to rescue me," Will said, voice was shaking. Always, even from knives in dark alleys.

"I'm told I've made a habit of it.”

“Will you touch me again?”

Hannibal’s hand returned to cup and caress his cheek. The other cradled the back of his head, stroked through his hair. It felt so good, as if the whole of Will's enflamed mind were held in the haven of Hannibal’s hands. The hands that took bodies apart were holding him together.

“How I would have loved to draw you on the night he hurt you,” Hannibal whispered against his ear. “Still shaken and bleeding. Would you have let me?”

“I'd have let you. I'd have— God, I shouldn't—“

“So much guilt over what you want. Yet you are here. Why did you keep my invitation tonight, Will?”

“Scarpa. He called me a sinner.”  
  
“Is being here with me a sin?”  
  
"It must be. I must be. Who else would want you, knowing— oh, God.” Will turned his head and kissed the hand that held him. His eyes burned with tears. He would have swayed, but there was nowhere to sway. Their bodies had come together, beyond return. He drew back enough to take in Hannibal's face and waiting there for him, at last, was that which he'd wanted most: a crack in the plaster of the mask, something hot and desperate beneath it. It swam to the surface through the black pools of Hannibal's eyes and betrayed itself on the wavering line of his lips. Those lips— if only Will could touch them. Would he recognise their shape? He watched them as they spoke.

“The night I tended to your wounds, I asked you what you wanted. Will you tell me now?"

This time the answer came to Will unbidden, a revelation on a tide.

"Take off my bandages."

The hands that caressed him fell away. Hannibal swallowed. It was only a moment, but it was surprise and hesitation, and it made Will bold. He reached out and clutched at Hannibal's waist.

"I'm in pain," he said through clenched teeth. "And you want to see where I hurt, don't you? I want you to. I want to watch you paint this picture."

It must have been the perfect incantation, for it set Hannibal in motion, as if he'd been waiting to hear it. Will was taken by the wrists and led closer to the fire, arranged until he faced it. Hannibal moved to stand behind him. Clipped, tidy gestures saw Will's jacket and waistcoat removed. Cufflinks followed, then his shirt, the buttons undone swiftly one by one. In what seemed like an instant he was bared to the waist, exposed to the light of the flames. He was still trembling. The crimson-draped table was just behind them, devoid of a feast.

"Are you cold, Will?"  
  
"No, I—"  
  
"The shivering. Is it the pain?"

It wasn't. Will had found another name for it. A hand covered his heart and pressed him back against the warm pillar of Hannibal's body. He heard the clink of metal behind him. He looked down and saw the knife in Hannibal's hand.

"Are you afraid?"

Will nodded. "Yes, I'm afraid." He reached up a shaking hand and put it over Hannibal's. He drew it up to his bandaged shoulder. "Please," he said.

The blade rent the gauze. Strip by strip, under Hannibal's deft fingers, the dressing came unravelled. Scraps of it drifted to Will’s feet in a pool of bridal white. The stab wound underneath was bloody, raw and hot.

The knife retreated, replaced by fingertips and knuckles that skirted the bloom of tender bruised skin. Will watched them dance over the rapid rise and fall of his chest. Hannibal's voice came from the breath that burned against Will's nape. It sounded strained.

"I cannot touch it, Will."

"My hands then. No—" Will reached for his belt and tugged it open. "Everything. Take everything off." There were scrapes big as rose petals all over his knees. There were bruises blooming up from his ankle. He was achingly hard. He wanted it all seen. He wanted to be touched.

Hannibal moved to stand between him and the fire. He reached up to touch Will’s mouth, only for a moment, then sunk slowly to his knees. Knife held in his teeth, he tugged down what remained of Will's clothing, then sliced neatly through the bindings on Will's hands. The cloth spun down in long white ribbons, fleetingly clinging to blood.

Will shook with a silent laugh. He felt giddy, curiously triumphant. All of his wounds, all of his shameful want stood out bared to the flames and to Hannibal's gaze. Arousal burned through him, and Hannibal's eyes were bright mirrors held up to its devastation. The mask was gone.

He brought his lacerated palms to Hannibal's face. Kisses fell on the cuts from lips soft as a salve. One hand, then the other brought to Hannibal’s mouth, then both together, as if they were a cupful to quench some thirst.

"Will—"

Will touched the flushed warmth in Hannibal's cheeks, the smooth lids above eyes that burned while they drank him in. How beautiful his monster was.

“Am I picturesque enough?” he asked.  
  
“You are beyond that. You are Canova's angels. You are Tintoretto’s saints.”

Will laughed again shakily and wound his fingers into Hannibal's hair. All of his fear was turning to cinder in the slow ecstasy of being undone. He shut his eyes and let himself feel the slow steady climb of warm hands over bare skin. That soft mouth followed, tracking everywhere, over thighs and hips. It kissed Will, it lapped him up, it wrapped itself around him and suckled hard, with hot and sudden greed. He cried out, startled and overwhelmed. He drew back.

"Wait," he gasped. "A backdrop. To complete the picture. Am I— am I meant for the table?"

There was a pause. Then the world spun and the ground vanished from beneath Will's feet. He opened his eyes — he'd been swept up into Hannibal's arms. Those eyes were so close now, locked on his own, and that mouth— it spoke again, so softly.

"No. I want you on silk, with moonlit Venice to frame you."

"Then take me there," Will said and kissed Hannibal's lips. From the answer he found there he would find no return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Context for the [quote at the beginning](https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Job-41-1/)


	12. The Gift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably a pointless reminder, but in this story Will is English.

When he was a child of ten, winter came to England with great violence. The Thames froze from Greenwich to Putney and beyond. One morning, under a sky still dark and laden with snow, Will stole out of his father's house. He made his way to the riverbank undetected and stepped out onto the ice. He skidded and fell almost at once, got up just as quickly with bruised knees, then ran out onto the vast white emptiness. He stopped in the middle of the frozen river and stomped with all his tiny might. He listened for creaks and cracks. Then he ran on and did it again.

They found him a mile from home, teeth chattering and skin nearly blue. When they asked him why, he told them he wanted to split the river open. After all, there were things, living things, trapped beneath the ice.

Was that when it all began?

Something had always been there, waiting for him beneath the surface. He looked for it over the years whilst he waded in and out of other people's minds. When Hobbs' blood spattered his face, when Abigail's blood gushed through his fingers, a hand reached out of the depths with a sword of madness and urged him on, towards this moment.

Will had arrived at last at the gates of his own derangement. He never could have imagined that this is what he would find inside: desire, pure and sharp as pain, and a giddy sense of freedom.

He was floating, body battered and naked, in the arms of the monstrous man he loved. He didn't care where he was being taken. He clung on. Now that he'd found his very own madness, he could only beg for more. Hannibal answered each of his pleas with mouth and tongue that melted and ran down into him like quicksilver.

The staccato of ascending footsteps punctured the hollow silence of the palazzo. Lights along the staircase grew rarer and dimmer, then disappeared altogether. All was reduced to monochromatic outline. Hannibal didn't stumble in the dark. Why should he? When the light went out in the snowy calle, the Leviathan didn't faltered either.

A door creaked open. The chamber beyond it was warm, despite the absence of fire. Will was brought down with care to rest on something soft and flat. Heat beamed down from above — he'd been domed with Hannibal's body. Breath touched his skin, a long exhalation from thigh to throat. The cushion of soft parted lips came to rest over the point of his pulse. He shivered and reached out blindly. He found, under fine fabric, the hard outlines of arms, shoulders, chest. He caressed them, and gave shape to the darkness.

"I cannot see," he whispered.  
  
"All things come into being in the dark. This particular darkness is yours, Will."

"A gift."

"A gift and a prerogative."

The kisses on his neck turned wet. They suckled at mouthfuls of his flesh whilst Will held fast to the air in his lungs to choke back appalling noises of want. His fingers found and slipped through strands of hair soft and fine as spider's silk.

A hand was roaming his skin, streaming ribbons of warmth in its wake. It pressed the tender bruises that ringed his wound, then slid between his legs. It clasped him and stroked him. He cried out, arched up into the hot grip. His shoulder protested and he panted through the sudden surge of pain and pleasure. Hannibal's voice came to him from the void, with its rusty warmth of a cello string.

"Is it enough to lie here in the dark and let yourself be pleasured?"

Will shook his head, still catching breath in short puffs. "No. I want the picture you promised. I want to see you. To see us together."

A kiss found his lips again, then broke away. All touch left him abruptly. He reached after, but found only empty air. He heard the soft rustle of a body moving away, of fabric sliding against skin.

"Hannibal," he pleaded.

"Close your eyes," Hannibal said from somewhere nearby. "Keep them closed. And tell me what you see."

Will closed his eyes. The image came to him at once. "I see myself. As I am now, but in the water below."

"Are you drowning?"  
  
"No. I'm drifting. I've come up. I've already been under."

He'd already drowned once. Now he was returning to the surface, like a corpse or some cruel reminder.

A match struck somewhere nearby. A light bloomed in the darkness, and others followed. Will kept his eyes closed.

"And the city?" Hannibal's voice was omnipresent, distant and close all at once.

"It's rising up slowly around me. The water births it. The moon pulls it up into the sky. I can feel the wake underneath me."

The light grew brighter, just barely, somewhere beyond his eyelids. He heard a soft steady pull of thick material somewhere above his head.

"Will you swim to the shore?"  
  
"No. I want to stay like this, drifting. I'm waiting for you to come find me."  
  
"Open your eyes, Will."  
  
The first thing he saw was his body, reflected in a vast mirror that faced a bed of deep blue and crowned a room as red as the chamber of a heart. He was drifting inside it, a pale, bruised human shape. Candles danced about him, paired with their twains in the mirror. And beyond him, past the vaulted windows from which curtains had been drawn, rose the moonlit contours of the floating city.

Will breathed a laugh. The entire world, his own self, seemed inverted and invented. He could no longer tell who was showing and who was being made to see.

"Please," he whispered.

Hannibal stepped into the light. He had peeled out of his clothes and Will had to shut his eyes again against the sudden assault from his own blood. When he opened them, Hannibal was kneeling beside him, all the hard and dangerous planes and angles of his body looming on display in the low light. His eyes moved over Will with the same brand of naked want Will saw painted on his own face in the mirror.

"How can you be so beautiful?" Will asked, hands fisting the sheets. He was drowning in the need to touch.

Hannibal reached for his wrist. He lifted Will's palm to the centre of his chest, over his heart, pressing hard enough to wake the lacerations there. His skin was like fire.

"This is your picture, Will. You are the agent of any beauty you see."

Will's hand moved then of its own accord. It soaked up all that hot skin, it touched parts delicate and hard, it traced the muscle and bone shifting underneath, and still he couldn't have his fill.

"Please," he begged again. Hannibal answered, descended down to the sheets and drew them together.

Their bodies met, forehead to forehead, hip to hip, an island of warmth and flesh on the dark blue sea. Hannibal reached down to touch them both and Will gasped like a creature not meant for land.

"I've never— I've never—" he confessed without breath. He covered his face with both hands.

Because he hadn't. There had been women, three or four, pleasant, some paid for. But his only true lover over the years had been his imagination, faithfully spinning erotic threads from stolen glimpses or innocent encounters. He was sailing beyond its horizon now, into unknown.

Hannibal kissed the tips of his fingers, his brow and his lips when Will's hands retreated. "Then let me be the first and last," he whispered and Will accepted the terrifying promise in those words, with all its consequences.

They fell into a kiss, moved and melded in tandem with their mirrored selves while the great serene city drowned in moonlight behind them.

\-----

Morsels of seared flesh sat on the silver tray, ringed with halved persimmons and slivers of blood orange. The wine tumbling out of the decanter looked black.

"Eat," Hannibal said. "Drink."

Will reached for the tray. He took a bite of the meat and chewed slowly. It was spiced, still warm and meltingly tender. What did it matter now where or who this feast had been drawn from? He'd had what he wanted. Time had arrived to pay his dues. And surely the moment was coming now. First the flesh, then the wine. He wondered whether he'd be able to taste the poison in the latter.

He was still naked, sat on the edge of the bed, half-draped in silk. Hannibal hadn't offered to re-bandage his wounds. Hardly any point in dressing a man already doomed.

Hannibal watched him eat. Something of the mask had returned to his face, but softened with a tenderness Will could not explain.

"Did he love you?" Will asked. "The painter you—" Slaughtered. He couldn't bring himself to say.

Hannibal reached up to stroke his cheek. "He didn't come to me in the way you did, if that is what you mean."

"Not willingly, then," Will whispered, and took up the wine. He closed his eyes, held his breath and gulped down a mouthful. Underneath an orchard of dark fruit, the wine's bitter note was strangely familiar. He stared down into the glass. How long did he have left now? Moments? Minutes? Best to help himself along: he had another swig.

Hannibal waited in silence until Will set the glass down with shaking fingers. He shifted closer on the bed and cupped Will's face in both hands. He turned it gently to himself and Will looked into eyes like two moonlit pools, wide and bright. What was their expression? It couldn't possibly be surprise.

"Is that why you came here tonight? To drink willingly of a poisoned chalice?"

Will leaned into the warmth of the touch that still filled him with longing, despite all that was to come. His heart was beating so fast. Was it thrashing out its last?

"I didn't know what else to do. No one believes a madman. And I felt as if I had been— chosen."

"Chosen for a festive feast," Hannibal said softly and slid a thumb over Will's mouth, gathering up a stray drop of wine. "Oh, Will. And so you wrapped yourself in the guise of a sacrifice, to spare the life of another."

Will nodded, tears stinging his eyes. His voice sounded faint in his throat. "I hope it's quick. I hope the last thing I feel is your touch, not your knife."

Who was putting out the candles? The room was growing dark again. Hannibal's sharp features were pulling back into shadow. Will's eyelids slid shut and struggled to lift again. He felt the vivid sensation of tender hands caressing his face. He thought he heard Hannibal sigh.

He swallowed. His tongue and lips were thick and heavy in his mouth, same as his eyelids. The feeling was as familiar as the taste of the wine had been. He felt as if he were melting. He blinked up at what remained of Hannibal's face.

"Not poison," he whispered.

Hannibal leaned in and kissed him, a lingering press of the lips. "Of course not poison, Will. Opium and a few other additives. You've had enough pain for one night. It's time you rested whilst I prepare your gift."

Dreadful panic rose in Will, smothered under the thick opiate curtain. He'd been wrong. Utterly wrong. He shook his head from Hannibal's hands. He mouthed a protest, flailed out with his arm to try and push himself away.

Hannibal caught his wrist in both hands and kissed the wounds on his palm. "I won't have you mistaking yourself for something you are not."

"You— first and last—" Will rasped.

"I am. I will be. Yours, Will. Your servant and your humble sacrifice. Here to give you exactly what you asked for."

Hannibal let him go with the slightest shove. Will slumped back onto the bed, helpless. Darkness descended again. This time he could do nothing to give it shape.

\----

The stag-headed hippocamp stared at him from the watery abyss. Weeds hung from its mossy antlers like entrails. Its eyes glowed red. It let out a huffing breath that travelled through the water and touched Will, everywhere, cold as death.

\----

He fell out of bed onto his wounded shoulder and let out a howl. Silence followed, punctured only by his own broken moans. He knew at once he'd been abandoned.

Urgency came to him on a wave of pain. He lifted up by degrees and forced himself to his feet. He was still in the bed chamber, left in the company of a solitary candle. He hobbled towards it, snatched it from the wall and staggered about the room until he found and lit a lantern.

He discovered his clothing, coat and shoes and hat included, hung neatly on a chair. They'd been readied for him — he was expected to get dressed and go. His present panic was anticipated.

He dressed with effort. His head was spinning and his deadened senses threatened to pull him under again. He made his way out of the dark of the red bed chamber and into the hallway. He held up the lantern and called out. The only answer was a long echo of his own desperate voice. The palazzo sat silent atop its drowned forest.

Foolish to call out, in any case. He knew no one would answer, just as he knew he'd find all doors locked and barred. All, but the front entrance — the one intended for him. He made his way towards it, descending the endless stairs with painful slowness.

Outside, Venice greeted him with a blast of icy air and a sky full of barely broken dawn, painted with the dark blue of Hannibal's bed. It took time, but a rare public gondola passing at this hour stopped at last for the pale disheveled man waving and pleading for its attention.

Through some small mercy, Will was able to make his request and its desperation understood to the boatman. While the city slept in blissful unawareness, the oar cut swiftly through the narrow canals towards Will's destination — propelled in part, Will thought, by his own failed duty and shame.

Would he find anyone at the police station? Perhaps a night patrolman, who could send the word out. Will staggered out of the boat and rushed as fast as his leg would permit down the Piazzale Roma, following the gondolier's directions.

To his surprise, on approach, he found the front steps of the station occupied by a group of men in dark coats, huddled against the morning chill in a cloud of cigar smoke. All faces turned to Will, the solitary figure limping towards them. Among them Will recognised some of the men from Coggiola's office, and Inspector Gatti.

Gatti saw him, too. He broke off from the group and made for Will in a quick stride. He was shaking his head.

"Coggiola," Will said as soon as he was in earshot, heading past the inspector, towards the station entrance. "Where is he?"

Gatti stepped out in front of him. "Signor Graham, please explain at once why you are here. You are unwell and I don't believe anyone has summoned you."

"I need to see the commander," Will demanded.

"I am here." Footsteps and Coggiola's voice came from behind them.

Will spun about and spoke quickly, before Gatti could protest further.

"Commander, I believe the Leviathan intends to kill this night. This morning. He— may have done so already." Then he added, from the depths of his guilt: "I am sorry. So sorry."

Coggiola moved between Will and his men, who were watching from the steps with untrusting eyes.

"How do you know this, Mr Graham?" he asked.

Will hesitated. He wiped at his brow and found it soaked despite the cold. He must have looked so ill, still half-drunk on morphia. "I cannot say. Not yet. But if you can send out extra patrols, anything—" He looked about him with dawning awareness. "But why are you all gathered here?"

Gatti threw his arms up in the air and groaned. Coggiola was as silent as he had been at the duchess'.

"There is indeed a body," the police chief said after a moment.

Will hugged himself against a shiver. Cold sweat was running down his spine. He felt ill. "The victim— what happened?"

Gatti glared at him from beneath a scowl. "No, signore. Not a victim. It's your attacker who's been found."

Of course. Will should have known. "Scarpa. How?" he said shakily.

"The coward hung himself."

That wasn't the answer Will expected to hear. Something was terribly wrong. "He wasn't— displayed?"

"Displayed by whom?" Gatti snapped. "Did you expect the Leviathan to display his own corpse? Quite a talent."

"Where was he found?" Will asked, dreading the answer.

"San Michele. The cemetery island. Morbid until the very last, the mad wretch."

Will closed his eyes and swayed. He heard Hannibal's voice, intimately, deep inside himself: _Venice's sister and her necropolis. The smell of tallow and late season blooms._

Coggiola, who'd been watching him closely, put a hand on his arm. "Do you have anything else to tell me at this very moment, signore?"

Will turned to him. He shook his head faintly.

"If you feel you are able, you may come along with us. We're setting off now."

What else was Will to do? Whatever they would find on the island of the dead was intended for him alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Literary liberties:
> 
> \- I don't know how fast opium works. I've never HAD opium, okay?  
> \- There was no great Thames freeze around the time 19th english!Will would have been a child.


	13. Farewell to Flesh

A fleet of city gondolas sailed out into the mists of the lagoon, each one brimming with stone- faced men of the force. From the shore, early risen Venetians stopped and stared. Rumours would soon begin to spread and the great lie would take hold: Serenissima's monster has been found. They are going to collect him.

Will sat in the back of the first boat, sheltering from the piercing chill and fighting off waves of nausea. He kept his eyes averted from the scrutiny of Coggiola's occasional glares and locked them instead on the soaring walls and spear-like cypress trees of the fast approaching island. His reckoning awaited there.

Even now, for all his guilt, he could scarcely blink without ferrying himself back into the great dark heart of Hannibal's bed chamber, to the acts committed and confessions made within. His skin teemed with the memory of Hannibal's touch.

They were met by the monk who'd alerted them to the discovery and entered the walls of the vast necropolis. Will limped behind their solemn procession.

They arrived quickly inside the monastery's cloister. A tree grew in its courtyard and there, suspended from a low branch that strained under its burden of flesh and snow, hung the man who had called Will a sinner.

Will's shoulder ached at the sight. Death had touched Scarpa's twisted face and made it merely sad. He still wore his hat. His eyes were open, fixed on the void. Were it not for the setting, this was as ordinary a suicide as anyone could imagine. Will saw instead a cast-off casualty of what he himself had helped set in motion.

Coggiola gestured for his men to stand back whilst the photographer prepared his contraption. Corino, the artist, produced his sketchbook. All watched in motionless silence whilst the scene was documented. Will watched the footprints about the tree instead.

He moved to stand behind the police chief. "The man who discovered the body. Will you ask him how many prints he saw in the snow?" he asked.

"In due course," Coggiola murmured, then turned to look at Will from beneath a newly formed frown. "Are you asking for my doubt, signore?"

"I'm asking you to consider that all may not be as it seems here." "And what do you have to offer in return for my doubt?"

Will tried to find an answer that would serve truth, but wherever he searched, he found betrayal. He was interrupted — a voice turned both their heads back towards the tree and to Inspector Gatti, who was holding up a paper produced from Scarpa's coat. He was reading out its contents in a triumphant tone. Will knew at once what message the words carried, for the gathered men began to murmur and stir. Soon all were pushing and clamouring to reach the inspector while Coggiola shouted for order. Will heard them cry: Leviatano, Leviatano.

There it was: a tidy conclusion to their case, gift-wrapped in a dead man.

And Will? Will had been left inconsolably empty-handed.

He let them all be. He retreated, unnoticed, into the arcade. He slipped out of the monastery and gazed out over the graveyard. Under the indigo-coloured dome of the winter sky sat an endless snowy sea of cypress and crosses, flanked by curving terraces of crumbling mausoleums. Venice's bells rung out solemnly in the distance, answering the high mournful wail of the gulls that circled high above.

"You'd never squander all this on a common hanging," Will whispered to himself. Too much beauty stretched out before him. The carnival was not yet over. And he'd been promised a gift.

He set out slowly, determinately, into the white fields of death. They would look for him eventually. But how quickly would anyone but Coggiola notice the absence of the strange and fever-struck foreigner?

He walked and walked. He didn't know where to search, what to look for. At least he was fleeing the ordinary distraction hanging in the monastery courtyard, left there for the benefit of the Venetian police.

The cemetery seemed unending. He moved from one section to another, past a maze of graves, past stones chiseled into mournful women and angels, weeping their icy tears. The last of Hannibal's concoction had lost its potent effect. Will's wounds ached again, and so did his heart. He was lost, adrift, and utterly alone.

He paused along an undisturbed path. "Where?" he begged of the stillness and of the dead.

The answer came to him on the wind. The wall to his left opened through a narrow covered passage into another section of the cemetery. Through it, he felt a breeze. Beyond it, he heard a fluttering, like the sound of great wings unfurling.

And there, at the foot of the passage, he saw it: red on white. A camellia left in the snow. Will tried to still his heart. After a moment, he followed the beckoning call.

He emerged into a snow-covered field sparsely scattered with gravestones. In its centre, mounted on a narrow pillar and facing wide gates that opened onto the lagoon and its host of far flung islands, stood a headless stone angel.

Reams of red fabric had been coiled about the base of the angel’s outspread wings, their trains left to twist against the brightening sky, caught in the sharp wind that broke through the parted gates.

Something — someone — had been bound to the stone.

Will stood fixed to the spot and forced himself to breathe. The path was set out before him. He still could refuse it. He could turn now, go fetch Coggiola's men — or simply walk away. His mind shot back sharply to the moment after his lecture when he'd accepted the first of the fateful gifts.

He'd chosen this, he alone. This was his path and he wanted no other. He'd asked to see and he would see.

The wind kicked up flurries of snow as he stepped closer. He circled the monument and looked up.

Red silk bound the man to the angel's body, from foot to shoulder. Blood trickled from the bottom of the crimson cocoon, a steady thin stream of life that pooled into the snow and fed the red flowers scattered there. The snow-tipped stone wings soared above, shadowed by red banners that danced in the air.

From beneath a veil of black hair, a lifeless white visage looked out over the water. It was Marino, the young composer.

Will shut his eyes tightly. It wasn't enough. He dropped his face into his hands. Still denial wouldn't come. Where was this man whilst Will writhed enraptured in Hannibal's bed? Was he somewhere in the depths of the palazzo, breathing his last?

Will had asked this of Hannibal. He had confessed his desire through the mask of the naive lover: to see.

"You're here, aren't you?" he whispered to the wind, head in his hands. "You wanted to watch. So come to me. Ask me what I see."

Perhaps it was the wind, but he never heard the footsteps. The familiar presence manifested behind him as if it had emerged from his own body. A hand wrapped tenderly around his throat. An arm snaked about his waist. He didn't startle or struggle. He expected the touch, already so dear, a part of him forever.

"You still smell of my bed," Hannibal murmured.

The soft vibration of his voice passed through Will's body. Will swayed back. "No time for ablutions between opium sleep and murder," he said shakily and felt an amused breath wash warmly against his skin. "Did Scarpa struggle?"

Hannibal's arms drew him closer. "Not at all. He was a man easily persuaded, even into death."

Will let himself look up again at the body strapped to stone, the red offering of flesh, silk and flowers facing the great watery vista before it. He let out a shuddering breath.

"You should have killed me instead."

"And you know why I didn't."

"Do I?"

"You do. Tell me what you see, Will."

The fine stream of blood snaked past the flowers, dissolving the snow in its path and pooling at Will's feet. He watched it kiss the tips of his boots.

He closed his eyes again and pressed back against the body that held him.

"Flesh bound to an ideal. A great red heart preparing to take flight." Beneath the warmth of Hannibal's hand he felt the words catch in his throat. "An oblation to love."

"Is it offering enough?"  
  
Will shook his head. "It's... incomplete."  
  
"Yes. Love must bleed."  
  
Will's breath escaped him through his teeth. "He's already bleeding."

"The greater the love, the greater the flood." The hand around Will's waist retreated and returned. Will looked down and saw the knife. "Will you help me complete the picture?" Hannibal whispered. "I promise you need only to cut through the cloth."

The knife slipped smoothly into Will's hand, warm from Hannibal's grip.  
  
"And after?" Will asked, voice still shaking.  
  
"Be with me." A kiss pressed against his jaw. Hannibal's voice was so gentle. "Leave with me."

The words sent Will tumbling, helpless, back into the depths of that great dark heart. The words were like water, a whole open ocean of promise. He gazed up at the bound man, whose skin was as pale as the stone. His head had become the angel's. The two were conjoined, inseparable, one. Will's hand, beneath Hannibal's own, squeezed about the handle of the knife.

The man's head drooped to his chest. Was it the wind?

Will blinked through a fresh flurry of snow. Something was wrong.

The dead eyes snapped open and blinked.

Will jerked in Hannibal's arms, a full body spasm of fear. "Oh God," he gasped. "What have you done?"

Marino's blue lips pried themselves open. A guttural sound escaped him, choked with thick blood. His body twitched in its bindings. His eyes fixed on Will, bulging with terror. Hannibal's grip became an iron vice.

A sob lodged in Will's throat. The man lived. The man lived, and if he lived, he would speak. And if he spoke—

The knife glinted in their hands. Will no longer knew which one of them held it. Hannibal clutched him with a vicious strength and spoke into his ear, utterly calm. "One cut, Will. That's all it will take. Do you remember yourself that dark alley, how you fought for Scarpa's knife? I saw what you were then. Just as you see me now."

Will pulled and squirmed against the hard embrace. "I cannot, I cannot, please—"

Marino's eyes were wild and pleading.

Will shoved. He pulled himself free and stumbled forward. He didn't turn. He couldn't run. But he could scream.

And so he screamed, above the wind, through the silence of a thousand graves, for help.

It happened so quickly: Hannibal's arms again, snatching him from behind, the knife dicing smoothly through his coat, the blade digging in — and pausing.

"Please," Will whispered and clasped the hand that held the knife poised, ready to sink and slice. Hannibal's breath burned hot against his neck.

Voices came, the sound of boots running through the snow.

The knife retreated. Hannibal's arms let him fall. Will slumped to the ground and clutched at the small wet bloom of pain in his stomach.

"I couldn't— Don't leave," he begged, the most foolish and futile thing he could say. If he turned now, he might at least see the face he loved, before it left him forever.

He crawled on his hands and knees to face the water. The bitter wind blinded him with his own tears. It was too late.

He'd been abandoned.

\----

They found him still on his knees in a puddle of blood and flowers. When they came, he staggered to his feet.

"Alive," he rasped, pointing at the stone. "But you mustn't—"  
  
They shoved him aside and rushed to the bound man. They didn't understand.

Coggiola and Gatti emerged from the narrow passage, faces red and bewildered. Will hobbled forward and gripped at Coggiola's coat. "Commander, I beg you, don't let them cut the man down. If they do—"

A chorus of cries rose up. Appalling, appalled cries. The men around the angel scattered.

The red silk bindings had been cut, setting loose a crimson flood of viscera and flowers. Freed of their silk bond, all the contents of the man's split belly tumbled out.

Coggiola looked on in horror. He turned to Will. He stared at the blood on his coat.  
  
"Commander—" Will managed, clutching his stomach.  
  
"You must leave here. Now, signore. Go."  
  
\----

He would not see the police chief again for many days.

He was helped off the island and returned to Duchess Komeda's. Later that day, he collapsed. What came after was a drawn-out delirium of strange voices and faces, of strange hands lifting to his lips silver spoons of bitter tinctures and broths. He was moved, not once — that much he understood. He was just conscious enough to see himself ferried away from Venice's shores. Her bridges and domes and palazzos retreated and faded from view.

In his fevered dreams, he swam for miles through the murky depths. He searched and searched, called out into the water, but nothing came.

\----  
  
Coggiola's face hovered above him, joined by the faces of two wimpled women. Will gasped and shot up in his bed.  
  
"San Servolo?" he asked fearfully.

The women urged him down gently. "No, Mr Graham," the police chief said. "Not the asylum. You are in a hospital in Abano Bagni, not far from Venice. You had an infection, stemming from your wounds. You are very seriously ill."

"You must tell me, I must know—"

"When you are better, I promise. I shall return and tell you everything. Rest for now. You've been through a trial."

\----

By degrees, his faculties returned to him. He spent the short daylight hours in his narrow hospital bed, gazing out the window at the distant Alps. Or he shuffled about dusty sunlit corridors, avoiding curious eyes. Mostly he slept. He woke every morning feeling like a ghost in his own existence, cast-off and forsaken.

Coggiola kept his promise. He returned some days later and found Will in his bed. He gave a cautious tip of his hat in greeting.

"Marino?" Will asked quietly. He could barely meet the man's eyes.

The police chief shook his head gravely. "He didn't survive beyond minutes."

"Did he— speak?"

"No, signore. As if what had been done to him wasn't terrible enough, his tongue had also been cut out."

Will should have known. He smiled bitterly to himself, and saw the frown that the smile elicited. He gestured for the police chief to sit.

"Scarpa's letter?"

"Confessed to all of the Leviathan's crimes," Coggiola said, then added slowly: "All but the last one."

An expectant silence fell between them. If Coggiola hoped for an explanation, none was forthcoming, despite Will knowing precisely why the Leviathan would not surrender credit for his last display.

"The people and the papers are satisfied," the commander continued. "Despite some disagreements, I've ensured that your contribution to the case has been acknowledged. Most believe our murderer has met his end."

"Most. But here you are, commander."

"And I think you know why." Coggiola leaned over his knees and clasped his hands together. "Firstly, there is the question of how you came to be injured on San Michele. Secondly, how you knew Marino's bonds should not be removed. And finally, there is Duchess Komeda. After you fell ill, she found in her possession and a note and a sealed letter from you. The note instructed her to pass the letter to me only in the event that you did not return to her from your dinner with Count Lecter."

Will's heart gave a violent thud. He fisted his bedsheets.

"And?" he asked faintly.

"She duly burned the letter when you came back from San Michele."

Will did his best to suppress his relief. Another heavy silence came down between them. Will returned his gaze to the window. One question weighed on him more heavily than all others.

"I’m sorry. I have nothing else to offer you," he said at last.  
  
Coggiola shifted closer. "Mr Graham, I see before me a man made sick with the truth."

"Then I should spare others that same sickness."

"At least tell me: will he murder again?"

"Not in Venice," Will said with utmost conviction. "Never again in Venice."

"That is not good enough."

"Denial of truth is the greatest gift mankind has ever given to itself. Embrace it, commander. It will save your sanity. Look at what happens to those who don't."

Coggiola could find no reply. Will watched him struggle for words and, in the end, stand with a sigh.

"I won't press you further, signore, not in your current state."

"For the best. Commander—" Will swallowed and hesitated. "Before you go: has anyone been to see me?"

Coggiola looked at him for a long moment. "If you mean Count Lecter, then no. I am told he's left Venice."

Will nodded and looked at his hands. The cuts there were healing, fading to thin pink scars. "You are a remarkable man, Mr Graham. Jack Crawford will be glad to have you home."

Home. The word sounded profoundly alien to Will, now more than ever. "And what if I'm not glad to be returning there?" he asked.

"Then you are welcome back in Venice anytime. I hope you know this."  
  
Will gave him a sad smile. "I'm already there, commander. Every night in my dreams."

Coggiola nodded. "Well, it's good bye for us then. Ah—" he reached into his breast pocket— "your correspondence." He set the letters at Will's bedside. Will saw Abigail's handwriting on the first envelope.

They parted with a handshake. Will watched the man take his leave and wondered if they'd ever come face to face again.

Sometime after the door closed, he reached for his letters and sifted through them quickly. None were addressed in the elegant hand he sought. Did he truly expect otherwise?

He opened Abigail's letter.  
  
He read it. Then he read it again. Then he hoisted himself from the bed.

He left the room and walked laboriously down the long hallway. He reached the hospital entrance, shrugging off several attempts to stop him, and set out along a long path lined with rows of cypress trees, so like the ones on the island of the dead.

He was halfway to the main gate when a nurse came rushing after him.  
  
He stopped and turned to look at her. She draped a coat carefully around his shoulders. She smiled and peered at him with questioning eyes.

"Signore?" she asked gently.

He gazed into her face, with all its innocence. She must have thought innocence was looking back at her.

What could he tell her that would give justice to the rushing flood of dread and desire deluging his heart? He looked down to the letter he held crumpled in his hand.

"I must go home," he said.


	14. Abigail's Letter

> _Dear Mr Graham,_
> 
> _How terrible it was to hear that you'd been taken ill! No one has told me what has transpired, and I've been left to think the worst. You must know that I have been praying every night for your recovery and I dare say some of my prayers have been heard, because Dr Bloom tells me you are improving. Thank God._
> 
> _Of course we do not yet know when you will return to us. It must be very lonely to be ill in a strange country, without friends around you. I hope you know all our thoughts are with you, even if we do worry._
> 
> _Yesterday our spirits were lifted by the arrival from the continent of an acquaintance of yours. Can you guess who it is? I will offer some clues: he is a very well dressed and well spoken gentleman. He says you met briefly in Venice and he thinks very highly of you. I do not know the exact purpose or length of his visit, but I believe he's been asked here to consult with Dr Bloom at Guy's. He has already given me the most beautiful scarf of red Italian silk._
> 
> _So now you have one more friend waiting for you at home. We all wish for your swift and safe return.  
>  _  
>  _Yours sincerely,_  
>  __  
> Abigail Hobbs
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  


End file.
